


A Change of Heart

by Pie (potteresque_ire)



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Community: hd_inspired, Gen, Gen or Pre-Slash, Hogwarts Seventh Year, M/M, Past Harry Potter/Ginny Weasley, The Tales of Beedle the Bard
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-11-30
Updated: 2008-11-30
Packaged: 2018-12-16 17:47:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 34,493
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11833860
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/potteresque_ire/pseuds/Pie
Summary: Draco Malfoy’s 7th year at Hogwarts was a time of horror and misery. Nonetheless, embers glowed in the Darkness - as unlikely friendships, as a reluctant mentor opening up his soul; as a world of Light and bliss, revealed by a mysterious mirror in the Chamber of Secrets …





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> _"A Change of Heart"_ follows the events of Book 7 from Draco's perspective, from the start of the school year up to the moment he refused to recognize the Trio in the manor. Given the Trio were in exile at the time, Harry’s presence was largely symbolic, mostly as a concealed figure in the Mirror of Erised that Draco had uncovered in the Chamber of Secrets. Mirror!Harry could be interpreted a a symbol of himself or as the Cause, hence the fic’s dual designation as pre-slash and gen -- the choice of which is up to the reader. In all cases, Draco emerged by the end of the story with a change of heart — towards Harry, towards what Harry stood for. Inspired by the summary of _"The Warlock’s Hairy Heart"_ from _"The Tales of Beedle the Bard"_ (the book wasn’t published yet at the time of writing), which was referenced in Luna and Draco’s conversation in the prologue. 
> 
> Written for pinkchocolate for 2008 hd_inspired. Reposted in AO3 in August, 2017. Many thanks to Vaysh for the meticulous beta work and encouragement. All remaining mistakes are mine.

**~ Malfoy Manor, April 1998 ~**

 

A Bluebell flame glowed in the empty water jug, casting a rich sapphire to Luna Lovegood’s hair. On her lap lay a crystal casket, the size and shape of a human heart; its flawless facets held a haphazardly prepared dinner.

“This is delicious,” she said, nibbling on a rose petal. Color had returned to her cheeks, a tinge of life painted by the Manor’s scarlet bloom.

Draco knelt before her. “Eat, don’t talk,” he urged with a whisper. Across the cellar, old Ollivander shifted in his sleep; a deathly stillness permeated the air.

Lovegood ignored him and broke the silence once more. “I wonder what  _The Quibbler_ ’s reporting this week.” Her impossibly wide eyes searched his for an answer. “I miss hearing stories.”

Draco shook his head and looked away. “The usual, I suppose,” he mumbled. It was a lie;  _The Quibbler_  had been silenced soon after her capture.

“What about you, Draco? Have you news to share?” she asked; the care in her words was sincere.

No. Nothing since his homecoming for the Easter holidays could Draco wish to revisit.

Lovegood offered the casket to him, as if in consolation; he pushed her hand away. “Oh … well, I’ll tell a story.” She shrugged and picked up another petal. “Something happy will be nice,” she said with a smile.

“Lovegood, please.” Draco raised his voice, only to give in to her curious gaze with a sigh. ”And you haven’t touched the sandwich.”

“I will, after the story.”

“Why?”

“I don’t want you to go. I like friends.”

“Your list of companions excludes me, I hope.” His hostile drawl suffered from lack of use, but its sentiment had been truthful. Almost. The Manor, its splendor once synonymous with the Malfoy prestige, shook constantly to the cries of the tortured, and the clashing of Dark Magic against the ancient charms that had held the structure for centuries. The walls reeked of decay and the stench of blood. He had smuggled the petals in the casket to mask their scent; despised by the Dark Lord, his mother’s beloved roses had long been banished from the living quarters.

Draco must have been staring at the casket — for Lovegood was examining it as well, her one hand lifting it against the soft blue flame while the other held the sandwich.

“It’s just like the one from  _Beedle the Bard_ ,” she remarked. “Do you remember that story?”

True to his English wizard heritage,  _The Tales of Beedle the Bard_  had used to accompany Draco to sleep every night; however, his copy had not seen light for years. He looked at Lovegood in question.

Dreaminess had set upon her gaunt features. “It’s such a sweet story too, you know, the warlock saving his heart in one of these?” She patted the casket lightly. “It’s wonderful for tonight.” She finally took a small bite of the sandwich — a small reward for her discovery.

“That story is ghastly,” replied Draco with a frown. It had been his least favorite, cruel and devoid of stupid  _Mudbloods_. His father had used to play act the Muggle kings and charlatans to perfection and send little Draco into fits of laughter.

Lovegood’s eyes widened. The sandwich hovered awkwardly before her nose as she countered, “But it’s a love story — people used to not believe it, of course, but my dad explained it in  _The Quibbler_  several years ago.” Her head tilted for a brief thought. “About the time he sighted the Blibbering Humdingers. I thought everyone knows by now.”

Her matter-of-fact conviction had a calming effect; it was an antithesis to the hysterical pledges sought by the Dark Lord. The leaden weight in Draco’s stomach lifted ever so slightly. “You can tell me what he said then, I suppose?” he asked.

“It’s a conspiracy,” Lovegood began, overjoyed, her voice dipping to a hush. “Beedle died soon after he’d sent off the manuscript, and someone paid the editor to rewrite the plot.”

“Why?”

“It wouldn’t sell. Many readers wouldn’t like the warlock and the others who lived like him; they might find them implausible, too.”

Draco had made himself comfortable by settling against the wall. “But I’d always imagined the warlock to be rich and famous. Didn’t he live in a castle with lots of servants?” As fragments of the tale returned to him, so did the portraits of the characters that he, as a child, had painted in his mind. There had never been a question in little Draco’s mind that the warlock should be well respected. Powerful, even. Perhaps, that explained why he had disliked the tale —

Lovegood nodded. “He did. All he didn’t have was a wife.”

“He was a terrible person, was he not? He was …” Draco swore his memory was failing; it had no recollection of sins committed by the warlock other than the ultimate crime propelled by his deformed heart. “He was arrogant.”

“He had close ties with family and friends. Even his servants worried about him,” Lovegood suggested lightly, her arms wrapped against her legs. “I believe he was a decent person. As for being proud and little odd, people find me odd too, you know.”

It took some effort for Draco to remain expressionless. “Then what had he done wrong?”

Lovegood did not answer right away. She merely offered the casket again, and this time, Draco took a petal. He sucked lightly at the tip, taking in its fresh scent.

Watching Draco with a smile, Lovegood then announced serenely, “The warlock just happened to fall in love with a man.”

The petal slipped from Draco’s fingers; it drifted, rocking steadily like a vessel in calm waters, down onto the dusty floor. “That’s a little far-fetched, isn’t it?” The rose must have parched his throat; his voice came out as a croak.

“Come on,” Lovegood crooked her head in disbelief, “you can even tell from the name of the fairy tale!”

Draco closed his eyes. “It was …  _The Warlock’s —_ ” he began. His mind blanched, as it had when his chest had split open, or when his eyes had been dazzled by the radiance of the Mirror —

“What happened to him, Draco?” Lovegood clued him in, her words muffled by a mouthful of bread and roast beef.

Draco exhaled; he did remember this — it was the theme of the story, after all. “His heart turned hairy —”

“That’s right!” Lovegood exclaimed. Draco hushed her. Nonetheless, her eyes sparkled and her lips mouthed his answer repeatedly.

 _Hairy_.

The title finally revealed itself.  _The Warlock’s Hairy Heart_. “You think the warlock fell in love with someone called … Harry?”

“Yes,” she affirmed plainly.

Draco could no longer restrain himself. “You’re mental,” he said.

He regretted it instantly. A sliver of hurt tore through her face. “I’m as sane as you are.”

That’s not saying much, Draco thought, but he nodded anyway. “So we’ll assume it was true — that somehow the warlock’s heart turned to a man named … Harry.” The name was difficult for Draco to enunciate, which was not surprising at all. “What about the rest of the story? Unless an entirely different tale was created, which I doubt anyone could have gotten away with.” He could feel a sudden rush of adrenaline; his speech hastened, and so did his heartbeat. “How did it all begin in the first place? The Dark magic, the warlock’s saving the heart in a casket … if forfeiting love isn’t the explanation, then what is? And he and his lover seemed to hate one another – the courtship felt like a challenge on both sides, and it ended with murder …“

“Isn’t that romantic?” Lovegood interrupted, looking rather smitten. “And it’s no murder; they revealed their hearts to one another, that’s all.” She sighed blissfully. “A happy ending.”

“Lovegood, she…or he… died!”

“Nothing’s ever really lost, Draco. Nobody either.” Lovegood was still serene. “They always come back in the end.”

“So did your dad have a way to reason these plot points? Your theory has no grounds without it.” Draco could barely keep his voice down. His breath was catching, his heart pounding heavily in his chest; with excitement came a strong sense of anticipation, a desperate need to reach for something that had inched so close to him. He waited eagerly for Lovegood to launch into another round of story-telling.

What he received instead, was an unaffected shrug of shoulders, followed by a simple “No”.

“You mean, that was it?”

“ _It_  was good thinking,” she countered coldly, only to melt into her affable self again. “May I show the casket to my dad one day? He’d love to see it –“

Draco stood with a start. “You don’t honestly believe this casket is the one the Warlock possessed, do you?” he spat; but to whom were his words addressed? “The story is only a children’s fable!”

“The Hallows are real,” Lovegood proclaimed. “All the tales are too; they’re bound to happen, if they haven’t already.”

Draco could not think; all his focus had been drained to keep his temper under control. “And how can there be something written about what has yet to occur?”

“Prophecies,” Lovegood answered simply, her large eyes warm and unafraid. “And they’re always cryptic, aren’t they? But don’t worry,” she smiled at Draco, “because someone always figures them out later.”

“You think that someone is your dad? Or you?”

She shook her head. “It takes someone special. Maybe,” her hand gave the casket a small wave, “someone who owns the same relic.”

Silence settled when Lovegood plunged into the depths of her thoughts. The last corner of the sandwich disappeared, morsel by morsel, between her lips.

“Do you have any ideas, Draco?” She inquired in a whisper moments later.

The casket filled up with water as Draco spelled a quiet  _Aguamenti_ ; the few rose petals left behind sailed on the reflection from the Bluebell flame. Their tranquility infected him.

“Ideas about what?” he responded, still gazing into the fire.

“Why did the warlock have a change of heart?”

 


	2. Part I

The moist heat of late summer pressed upon Draco the moment he had found his footing on the platform, his balance nearly toppled by the shifting soil sodden with rainwater. He dragged his school trunk down the steps, cursing under his breath at its weight.

Storm clouds hung low in the sky, uncertain whether to assault or depart in this windless evening. Even the Hogwarts Express succumbed to their gloom; its bright scarlet dulled to the shade of blood, its once lively swirls of steam spiraled into memories.

Against the darkening horizon, the engine choked out a soft bellow. It sounded like the aging mother of a wounded beast, calling into the night for her lost son who did not dare to respond.

The packs of predators only accentuated the solitude of the missing prey.

“Mr Malfoy, Headmaster Snape would like to see you after the Opening Feast.” Striding into Draco’s path was a Death Eater, one of the many who had stood guard to  _ensure the safety_  of incoming students.

“And you should have let that savage take care of your belongings,” she continued, nodding in Hagrid’s direction. The tip of her wand lingered on the black leather of his trunk; Draco was certain a Disillusioned, Silenced hound was sniffing rapaciously. He tightened his grip, imprinting upon his sweated palms the relief of the entwined serpents on the handle; the guardians of the Malfoy coat of arms stretched and curled against the whitened knuckles of their young master.

“I can manage,” he said.

The words sealed the Head Boy’s allegiance to the Dark Lord. Whispers of revulsion and sneers of triumph swept through the platform, whirlwinds of words that stole every bit of air from Draco’s lungs. They died as quickly as they had begun, however, oppressed by the burden of the descending night. Only with all his strength did Draco persist to stand beneath its weight.

He was but a hollow shell, whose core had gone missing in the grief and pain of the past months.

Pushing the Death Eater aside, Draco forged on, his trunk in tow, his chin held high. He passed a neat file of first years, whose names were being checked off on a registry, listing those of proper age and bloodline to enroll.

He heard the carriages outside Hogsmeade Station, but was determined to not look their way.

Under the shadows of trees reaching far into the skies, the narrow path he had tracked seven years ago had become more sinister. His trunk rocked and slipped on the uneven pebbles, and in his effort to steady it, Draco heard his name called. Distracted, he turned to look.

It was Pansy, beckoning him to join her for the carriage ride to the castle. Even from the distance, the glint of her eyes was unmistakable, showing only the slightest trace of bewilderment at his detour.

Draco never answered. For his gaze was locked to the quicksilver eyes focused upon him from behind her, terrible pools of light piercing mercilessly through the pupil-less center. Void as they appeared to be, they were laden with judgment, wordless accusations that scorched like flames.

He stilled. His mind chanted its plea — chains of thoughts that had haunted and threatened to strangle him through the summer.  _Please … I wasn’t a murderer. I saw death, but I did not kill. I … couldn’t._

The thestral responded by turning to gaze into the sky. Skeletal relief glided beneath a sea of silken black, and leathery wings spread in their desire to fly only to fold back again, the nostrils emitting a heavy puff of vapor.

It was a sigh, Draco thought, as the creature trotted away, the stagecoach in its tow. He let out a sigh of his own and continued his hike to the edge of the lake.

Not a ripple could be seen in the water, except around a lone boat anchored in the alcove. Silver ringlets radiated from the ferrule of a pink umbrella, shadowed by the vessel sunken to near submersion from the weight of its occupant.

Unkempt and barbaric as it was, the familiar face was a calming sight.

“Prepare a boat. I’m crossing the lake,” Draco commanded, with as much confidence as he could muster.

Startled by the voice, Hagrid clumsily stuffed a handkerchief into his pocket. “I’m still yer professor,” he grumbled, the nose carrying a tinge of red as the half giant stood and leapt onto the soil. Waves rolled from the violently rocking boat towards the center of the lake. “An’ yer supposed ter ride the carriages.”

Before Draco could formulate an excuse, the weight of his trunk lifted; Hagrid had scooped it away and was carrying it down the shoreline, towards the fleet of small boats prepared for the first years. Soon the strides shortened, however, and Hagrid spoke into the night without turning, “Yeh’ve met them before, those thestrals. They know yeh …” His words came to a halt, his eyes finally met Draco’s. “They’re dead clever, good at finding their way …“ His words trailed off as the trunk was placed in a boat, and he gestured Draco to board.

“Forward!” A gentle push parted the water at the stern of the boat, and the journey into the heart of Hogwarts commenced. As the shoreline receded into darkness, questions drifted from the rapidly vanishing shadow on the shore. “Were there fights on the school train? Anyone—I dunno—annoying yeh?”

Draco remained silent. The train ride had been the most uneventful he had had for years, he had no nose to break, no insults to trade. In fact, he had not heard anything beyond muffled words and fake snores as he had patrolled the corridors; most students, especially those in the younger years, shifted and petrified into postures of resolute avoidance when he had looked through the compartment doors.

He wondered if this was how one should envision peace.

Peace, Draco had once thought, felt like the water he was gliding upon. He remembered the first time he had traveled this way; it had also been a breezeless evening, but the skies had been lit with stars, casting tiny bright sparkles upon the glass windows of the castle and the surface of the lake; in their light he had caught the reflection of himself, childlike and flush with excitement.

On this starless night, the same mirror no longer showed his face; instead, a dark, featureless shadow raced along the hull of the boat, unidentifiable as it was restless. Trembling with a sudden, overwhelming chill, Draco pulled his trunk towards himself, and with it, his most valued possessions — letters from his parents and friends, childhood keepsakes and trophies. He had refused to shrink it or let others come into its possession, for it was all he could trust to belong to him.

The serpents on the handle flicked their forked tongues and licked his fingers for comfort; the ivy that veiled the entrance of the castle was drawing near.

 

 

Like pests, they were.

They putrefied the columns, burrowed to form crevices, gnawed and whittled the foundation away. They bred like wildfire, unstoppable neither by force nor persuasion; for their thoughts were deceptive in their simplicity, their nature savage as beasts’. There was no escape from them.

They were Muggles, snarled Alecto Carrow, Professor of Muggle Studies, spit foaming at the corners of her mouth. They were those with tainted blood, accused the Daily Prophet, its sharp quills cutting into parchments as  _Avada Kedavra_  would soon cut into the indicted.

They, too, were rumours about Potter, Draco thought. Words about the Vanished One infested every corner of Hogwarts, blossoming in the darkness enshrouding the school; fervent hero worship, instigated by the rumours’ message, simmered under the intense heat of September. Billowing as they were suffocating, Draco also likened them to the garments of the new headmaster, who had called him into his office to address this issue.

Draco was once again aghast by the sight of the man and his office. The buttons on the robes had more than doubled since that fateful day in June; thin, black laces now intertwined between them, drawn so tightly that all indications of the chest rising and falling below were impossible to see. Meanwhile, the circular room had been halved by an invisible line. On one side was a crammed assortment of spindle-legged tables and ornate cabinets, piled with delicate silver instruments laying topsy-turvy against one another, their pistons and swivels creaking angrily in their disabling entanglement; the other side was almost barren save for the mahogany desk relocated from the dungeons. The portraits of the former headmasters had all been turned to face the wall.

One object was distinctly out of place – a glass case propped against the large desk, which displayed a silver sword heavy with a ruby-studded hilt; its gleaming surface stole the only ray of sun that had managed to slither in between the heavy curtains.

“Ignore the gossip,” Severus Snape said without preamble. “Let them run their course.”

“Why?” Draco asked, equally brusque.

“I suppose,” Snape placed his quill into the ink pot as his eyes shot up, “one of the reasons would be to bring the Head Boy some peace.”

“Things are going well.”

The former Potions Master frowned ever so slightly; Draco spelled  _Occlumens_  under his breath just in time. “Indeed,” Snape countered, his tone snide. “It doesn’t take Legilimency to see that. Tell me, Mr Malfoy, how many points have you deducted in the past week for conversations regarding The Boy Who’s Run Away?”

Draco tilted his face to a portrait that wasn’t.

“You should be well aware by now, given your past records of engaging the media,” a sneer took shape on the sallow face, “that adolescents are prone to mindless talks and their attention span rivals that of a gnat; your behavior accomplishes nothing but prolonging their interest in the matter.”

“Have you heard what they’re saying? About Potter?” The criticism was certainly uncalled for, thus Draco launched his defensive. “Last week it was his grand break-in into the Ministry, how he single-handedly abducted a good handful of Mudbloods and escaped unscathed, and now, right outside these walls,” Draco pointed to the stairway, his voice raised beyond his customary drawl, “everyone’s talking about how he’s rallied every Muggle for his cause and will come with crates of explosives and metal drills —”

“What do you think of all this?”

The question was unanticipated. Draco stumbled for words.

“Do you believe Potter can pull this off?”

“I … of course not.” The split second of hesitation nonetheless betrayed Draco’s thoughts; Snape feigned amusement.

“Your faith in the Chosen One’s skills and charm is beyond touching, considering,“ his expression darkened, and a wave of his wand split Draco’s left sleeve into two, exposing the Dark Mark, “to whom your allegiance lies.”

“Our Lord wouldn’t want to hear those stories!” Draco shouted, pulling the frayed edges of the torn fabric back together. His face was burning, like the liquor that Draco surmised could only be Firewhisky cascading into the Headmaster’s empty tumbler.

This man had no heart for the meek.

“The Dark Lord would prefer you hone your skills in Defence Against the Dark Arts at your leisure.” A corner of Snape’s pale, thin lips lifted at the mention of the subject. “Amycus Carrow has been most displeased at your abysmal understanding of the Cruciatus curse.”

“I understand it well enough,” Draco muttered through clenched teeth.

“And since when is  _well enough_  good enough for a Malfoy?” The Headmaster somehow managed to enunciate every word despite his low voice; he then leaned back in his seat and snickered in mock comprehension. “Of course, since your father received the honour to play host for our Lord, he is also striving for  _well enough_ … I see … ”

Draco stood with a stomp of his feet; his chair threatened to crash, would have done so if not for his hand just managing to hold on to it. “You do not speak ill of my father.”

“Do you wish to be like him?”

The words, soft as they were, thundered in Draco’s ears. They robbed him of strength. The chair collapsed.

Snape spelled it upright and stood, his gaze meeting Draco’s; his ghostly complexion regained a hint of life in the light reflected from the sword.

“Then listen to me. This will be the first and last time I give you this advice. Keep silent and do whatever is asked and expected of you, nothing less, nothing more. Trust no peers, but make no enemies; observe but let things be, as the way the Fates would have guided them.”

“You’re asking me to become invisible,” Draco murmured, defeated.

Snape picked up the glass and downed the contents. It was only when Draco headed towards the spiraling staircase that he heard an answer.

“I’m asking you to reflect.”

Draco paused. The oak double doors stood before him, their once polished wood lackluster after suffering brutal magic to rip out its prior embellishments – griffins whose scars remained beneath the metallic Dark Marks that had taken their place, appending to each skull a pair of shadowy wings. On the cold silver of these door knockers, his face was distorted beyond recognition. He pushed his palm against it and stormed out of the Headmaster’s office.

It was hours later when Draco recognised the scent lingering on his robes – the gentle, clean sweetness of elderflower wine.

 

 

Sunshine filtered through the windows of the Defence against the Dark Arts classroom, its radiance at once apt and ironic. There had not been a day of rain since the term had begun. The rays fell just short of the wooden stakes that Amycus Carrow had erected, but the flashes of Unforgivables cast by the students had more than made up for the diminished light.

Moving paintings covered the walls from floor to ceiling, some trimmed along the edges so to not leave even a breath of space between them. A thousand fold more gruesome than the portraits Snape had shown them a year ago, these depicted torture, violence inflicted by one man to another, wizard to Muggle. The victims’ muted screams were deafening in their silence, their misery conspicuous as the dried tears that would not fall.

Crying was, after all, not as much for the weak as it was for the fortunate, who still entrusted himself to be worthy of an audience. It had been a difficult lesson for Draco to learn, but he had learned it; he had not cried since —

 _Since._  His mind managed a narrow escape, taking refuge into memories that were at once closer and yet more distant – like, perhaps, the lopsided leer, the one Carrow had not been able not suppress during the first class.

“These pictures? The best of what the Dark Arts can do. You’ll figure it out in this class, of course, that’s my promise … and how to – ah –  _defend_  against it.” Scorn had consumed the wide face of the Death Eater, his words interlaced with high-pitched, wheezing giggles. “A couple of exercises should do the job. Nothing beats hands-on training, you think?” Wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, his small eyes had swept across the class. “Someone will volunteer to help.”

On this day, therefore, the only Gryffindor in the class was once again conferred the privilege to help them all; stripped naked waist up, the young man was bound on the stake at the very centre of the room.

_Crucio!_

Longbottom’s muscles twitched in agony; his lips remained tightly sealed, however, and the only sounds were the occasional drips of sweat on the marble floor. Gregory Goyle waved his wand clumsily in attempt to follow Carrow’s demonstration, but merely singed a hole into the skin already scorched with rope burns; as the orange beam flickered unsteadily across the unlit half of the room, there still was no admission of pain from Longbottom.

“What did I teach you?” Carrow shrieked. “Intention!” His brittle mask of displeasure soon gave way to ecstasy as he fired another spell towards the  _volunteer_. “A careless curse is a useless curse!  _Crucio_ , when it’s perfect, sounds like nothing, smells like nothing, looks like nothing! Why waste energy to make a show, when what you need is for one person to feel it all?”

Vincent Crabbe cackled; the rest of the class, however, appeared petrified. The Hufflepuffs had congregated by the window, shaken by the injustice they neither had the courage to fight nor the wits to argue against; meanwhile, the Ravenclaws leaned against the wall, stoically observing the horrendous exercise of human nature unfolding before their eyes.

Carrow regained his familiar leer when he scanned the room and located Draco, whose blond hair remained a conspicuous halo despite his robes blending into the shadows of the corner. “But then,” he continued, “that’s what some people—families even—are only capable of: all show, no substance.” He fished a thin, parchment-rolled cylinder out of his pocket, placed it between his lips and lit the end with a spark from his wand. Head tilted backwards, he inhaled deeply, peering through the smoke that rose towards the ceiling. “Think they’re all that, when they aren’t even qualified to lick … ” He caught himself; a corner of his mouth twitched and his vision re-directed sharply at Draco.

“Malfoy, show them what you’re made of.”

Violent coughs disrupted his words, but did little to halt the drill that had become a daily sighting in this class: Longbottom tied on a wooden pole as Draco approached to face him, summoned to play executor. The hawthorn wand would form a lone bridge between them, trembling at the ready.

 _Do whatever is asked and expected of you._  Snape’s words trailed the tapping of Draco’s boots against on the wooden floor.

Longbottom was watching him, his eyes clear and calm. They had closed before their first encounter in DADA, perhaps even during the second, but afterwards they always remained observant. The hint of trepidation in them had long since dissipated. Draco reached out, attempted to steady his wand by focusing the tip to Longbottom’s nose; Longbottom, who had struggled and squirmed against the rope for the past hour, stood perfectly still.

“What’re you waiting for? Get on your sissy arse and fire the spell!” squealed Carrow, and the hawthorn wand shook violently in the tight grip of Draco’s hand. “Don’t tell me you’ve learned nothing all summer. Although,” Carrow sneered wickedly, “that shouldn’t surprise me at all.  _He_  told all of us you’re useless …” He closed in, and something pushed against Draco’s thigh. “You know when?” A shift of weight made apparent that it was a hard cock, and Carrow breathed into Draco’s ear. “When you were thrashing about in the cellar, starkers, screaming for mum and peeing on yourself.”

Longbottom tried to keep his face expressionless but failed; his brows furrowed at the overheard conversation, and Draco knew there was no time to spare. He let in what had already been threatening to invade his mind – the shade of the Dark Lord hovering over him in the dungeon, hissing in his cold, merciless voice:  _Draco, give Rowle another taste of our displeasure … Do it, or feel my wrath yourself._

The threat rang in his ears as it was repeated, louder and louder; it radiated from Draco like dark smoke, blacking out anything and everything – from the lustful gleam in Carrow’s eyes to every torture he had witnessed and endured in the Manor, to the mercy he had rejected on the thunderstruck Tower, and finally, to the one moment when this curse had become his curse, when the splash of water on the bathroom floor had threatened to drown out the fateful spell:  _Sectum–_

“Crucio!” Draco spelled.

It was colourless, odourless, noiseless; like the Cruciatus, like a void.

Then it shattered, whatever it was, into a scream, stifled only by the arch of blood that spilt a split second later from Draco’s mouth.

Longbottom’s eyes, squeezed shut at the last moment, flew open; his breathing quickened, his shoulders that had remained free above the bindings slumped while his hands below twisted and flexed, fingers extending as long as they could in an effort to reach down – for Draco had collapsed against his shin, upon the fabric of his trousers that had turned wet and sticky. A small puddle of scarlet pooled on the floor, overlaying a maroon stain that grew darker and bigger day after day; the hawthorn wand had rolled off to the side.

Carrow growled and yanked on the collar of Draco’s robe. Awareness dawned through the smoke and the blood and Draco willed his hands to move immediately, to seek the demon who refused to leave him, who tore its way under his skin along his face and down his chest. Desperation raided every cell within him; the urge to exorcise the culprit of this invisible assault was so compelling that his fingernails dug into his flesh and clawed deeply into it –

“Please … Professor Carrow.” In his nebulous state, Draco thought he could hear a plea. Longbottom’s. He spoke slowly, his tone appeasing. “Please stop this. Just … just punish me any other way you want.”

A rough kick from Carrow shoved Draco further back into reality; the ghost vanished, if only to emphasise the authenticity of the pain. A bell rang from afar to signal the end of class and Longbottom promptly fell onto the floor, his muscles having weakened from being restrained for so long; nonetheless, his arm extended instinctively, supporting Draco as he would a friend in need.

Carrow smirked at the display. “Malfoy still doesn’t know a damn thing. We’ll try again next time.” Another wave of his wand buried the stakes within the wooden floor; as he turned to leave the classroom, he crooked his neck and smiled a sinister grin.

“And I wouldn’t get so comfortable with him, Longbottom. This pretty boy here? A poofter.” It was not a warning; but rather an announcement, one made with sadistic glee. Wheezing giggles broke out as he left the room, Crabbe waddling in his wake. Goyle hesitated for one moment, taking in Draco’s state of weakness before following suit.

The Ravenclaws stayed put, deep in thought; the Hufflepuffs approached the centre of the room to help Longbottom to his feet. Longbottom reached out for Draco, heedless of Carrow’s words; his square face was an open canvas painted in equal parts with curiosity, concern … and pity.

Draco’s half extended hand fell back onto the floor. He smeared his own blood across the floor as he half crawled, half walked across the room before leaning against a wall to help himself up. The Hufflepuffs grumbled at his poor manners, but Longbottom’s voice could still be heard, his tone still easy.

“You should really go see Madame Pomfrey.”

Draco struggled to step away from the walls that supported him. “You really should mind your own business,” he quipped. The pain was intense as he straightened and escaped into the corridor as quickly as he could, sweat drops tumbling down his skin. Salt stung in his eyes and his vision blurred – not fast enough, however, for him to not see Longbottom’s shoulders set as he watched Draco’s exit with a sigh.

 

 

The ceiling rose to infinite heights at the end of the corridor; the marble staircase spread forlornly below, the once grand and welcoming entryway of the castle was now forbidding as Hogwarts herself. The torches had not been lit since the Dark regime had taken over, their charred ends further suffocated by the haze of Peruvian darkness powder dispersed every night.

Draco’s hands, still damp with perspiration, clutched the marble railing. Three more flights of stairs going down and he would be in the dungeons, where he could retire in the safety of his own bed. Instinctively, he pressed a palm against his chest, an unspoken vow to soothe and to heal.

But the promise was short-lived, forgotten in the ensuing terror just as it had been during the many previous days. All it took was a brush of his fingers on his robe, and the shock as they dipped into fabric that burrowed without resistance, as they felt a chill radiating from underlying skin that still burned with pain. It was as if an Arctic storm had ripped its way into his chest, rattling the confines of an empty ribcage already jangling with his quick and shallow breaths.

Draco thought he heard students stumbling upon one another, as he forced his way down the stairs; the marble stretched before him, lit by the pale blue glow of house ghosts who had drifted into the Entrance Hall and perched upon the torches – a tacit effort to uphold the presence of light at this hour of the setting sun. Draco’s shadow on the smooth stones lengthened, then came alive as a malformed beast on the sodden, uneven dungeon floor, twisting and morphing as it trailed its master into the depths of the castle.

The labyrinth of corridors sprawled before him, pitch-black tentacles shrunken to feign homeward shortcuts as they vied for his attention; they confounded the proper path to the Slytherin dormitory to all but its house members, whose knowledge of the motifs engraved along the corridors helped guide their way. Years ago, on his very first evening at Hogwarts, Draco had craned his neck before every intricate curve above the then-bright lanterns, driven by both the desire to outsmart his housemates and an inexplicable dread of losing his way. His reward had been the loyalty of two friends-cum-bodyguards, who in the following years had never needed to master the skill; Draco not only brought them home soundly every evening, but eased their fears by reminding them constantly of the way to safety.

 _All you have to do,_ Draco used to drawl,  _is to follow the echo from the Potions classroom on the other side of the labyrinth. Hear those sounds of water dripping into the gargoyle basin? Let them be your guide._

That discovery, made in his second year, had once been Draco’s pride. Yet, after the summer of perpetual storms, the brisk, clean echoes had been there no more, parched to death upon Snape’s departure from the dungeons. Gone, too, had been those lanterns required for Draco’s navigation among the corridors. They had been confiscated, poisoned by the darkness powder.  _Lumos_  had been a shaky replacement, its glow weakened significantly within the confines of the castle and its every use traced to detect night-time activities. It was no match against the Hand of Glory that Amycus Carrow had since raised to lead his fellow Slytherins back to their homes, that had been stripped from Draco for his failure to fulfil the Dark Lord’s demands.

The skeletal digits of the Hand had thus plucked away Draco’s allies – just as they had usurped the light ensnared on the palm. The hollow in Draco’s chest radiated, and with it, the pain; it, too, had been set free by something sinister … by someone whose name had been synonymous to glory.

Potter had gotten away with Dark Magic, had he not?

Draco tore his thoughts away; rage and envy had had their time and place. He had to summon, for the task at hand, all his focus, his control, his patience – here was where all these virtues had been gifted to him, and he would demonstrate them here, in this dungeon, as well.

He could brave this labyrinth.

He could, while being too aware of the humiliation awaiting him in the Slytherin common room, as he half-blindly sought his way in the dark.

He could, and he would make it back to his private alcove for the past six years, to feign rest after casting protective spell upon protective spell from behind the emerald curtains, curling into a foetal position to reminisce upon every item in his school trunk until the sun rose.

He could, or —

Draco turned; the small pool of water on the stone floor sloshed. A dash of bluish glow from the upper levels stole through, blossomed into sapphire splinters that leapt into the air amidst the spray of fluid.

Faint as this light was, Draco chased it, and raised his feet to meet the stair’s ascent.

 

 

 


	3. Part II

Many times Draco thought of turning back.

The stairs felt never-ending. The thrashing of his heart had weakened to a flutter, and every muscle in his body ached. They would have surrendered if not for the marble railing shining a richer blue as he met the seemingly insurmountable challenge one step at a time.

He finally collapsed at the clearing of the second floor. It was deserted, and the phantom glow guiding him had faded, as the ghosts moved to resume their light-bearing task in the Great Hall. When the last ray of sunlight filtered through the windows, he found a defaced stone bust of a goblin and settled there, arms wrapped around his knees as he tried to calm his furious panting.

In truth, he had no idea where he was heading; there was no escape from the darkness rapidly closing in as the night fell. Within the space confined by his huddled frame, he felt his silver-blond hair and Head Boy badge subdued to shades indistinguishable from the black fabric beneath them, their striking brilliance under the sun a memory, a mockery and a lie. A snake of bile crept its way up from his stomach, and with it, a pressure was building in his nose …

A sudden sensation of being watched siphoned Draco’s tears away. He looked up and his eyes were immediately drawn to the wall opposite to him.

The same poster graced the stone surface at regular intervals, and the presence Draco had felt were its eyes, shifting upon it. A line of bold lettering ran across the centre of the parchment, but its message was a smear in the dark. It bore little significance beneath a pair of glasses that highlighted a look of pure trepidation, unburdened by age, a childlike curiosity sparkling in the irises.

Draco straightened abruptly. He struggled to stand and approach the wall, holding his lit wand tip before him.

UNDESIRABLE NUMBER ONE, the heavy script emblazoned across the midline of the poster, superimposed on a monochrome photo of the youngest champion ever chosen for the Triwizard Tournament.  _He_  was fidgeting in the chair with a stiff smile, his spectacles gleaming as they caught and deflected the assault of dazzling camera flashes before him.

Draco remembered every detail of this photo; he had ridiculed it for hours before the Slytherin crowd on its day of release, then hexed that whole issue of the  _Daily Prophet_  into bits and pieces on his own bed. Later, he had seen Potter in his dream, the contents of which he had had no recollection of except that he had woken the next morning with morsels of paper stuck on the sodden front of his pajama bottoms. Fuming beyond measure, he had stolen another issue of the newspaper from the library, scrutinised every frame of the photo and placed the most unflattering shot on the “Potter Stinks” badges. His scheme had been a success – a brilliant revenge, and a satisfying one at that.

Despite himself, a smile found its way onto Draco’s lips. The memory served as an unexpected, if temporary, analgesic, and he strolled down the corridor, his wand pocketed and the light on Potter’s glasses as his guide. The row of posters continued in its orderly fashion until it reached a doorway – at least, that was what Draco recalled it to be – for the whole area, every inch of the wooden frame and panel included, was plastered with layer upon layer of posters. Each had been graffitied; the “Un” in “Undesirable” had been crudely crossed out in scarlet, and a kiss of the same shade superimposed onto Potter’s lips.

The lipstick was of the colour that few dared to carry, and even fewer could carry it so well. This was, no doubt, Ginevra Weasley’s handiwork. Whoever had assigned this meagre task of postering to her, to announce to the school that her missing boyfriend had been designated the Wizarding World’s Most Wanted, was either exceedingly cruel or preposterously soft-hearted.

He brushed his hand against the scarlet; the lipstick smudged readily under his fingers – it was still fresh, yet leaving behind an indelible mark of Potter having been kissed. Draco wondered why his mind had immediately set to reverse the effect, to erase all evidences of Weasley’s self-indulgence; perhaps, he could already imagine the punishment to be doled out tomorrow. Which sixth-year would be fortunate enough to exercise Unforgivables on the undeniably beautiful Miss Weasley?

Draco shook the frightful image from his head; despite so, the pain returned, cutting even deeper into his chest. He gasped, once again felt his ribcage hollowing beneath his robes, as he stared at the faint tinge of red remaining on Potter’s grey lips, stubbornly bringing to life what had been painted with love; even in his absence, Potter remained what others had long deemed him to be — a saint cherished, heralded by portraits in the halls.

Desperate for a place where he could recuperate in peace, Draco looked away; what met his vision was a door down across the corridor, which, in striking contrast to the one behind him, was entirely devoid of Potter’s watchful eyes. Head resolutely held low, Draco garnered his last bit of strength and sprinted inside that room, slamming the door behind him.

Light took the place of the absolute darkness he had expected.

It was a girls’ bathroom. The chipped sinks and flaking cubicle doors suggested an out-of-order facility, which might explain why the Death Eaters had neglected to eliminate its light fixtures. Candles flickered on holders, yet their feeble light had never been more radiant to Draco’s eyes; leaning against the wooden door panel for support, he slid slowly to the floor.

It was then that he noticed a sheen on the floor tiles, and a silver silhouette emerging between a slanted door of a stall and its broken hinge; he was greeted by a chill as the ghost almost glided into him.

“Myrtle?” Draco inquired, for the ghost busily smoothing out her school robes bore little resemblance to the Moaning Myrtle he had known. She was still plump, but the once lank hair was neatly braided, her skin pimple-free and the thick glasses missing.

Even more startling was her delighted smile. “Hello, Draco,” she said, batting her eyelashes. “You’ve finally come to visit me.” She squinted to observe Draco’s face. “What’s wrong this time?”

He had sorely missed her concern. “Noth ... nothing,” Draco muttered, “I just need to rest for a bit.”

“You can tell me. You did all those times last year, you know.” Her legs, still elongated to a long silver train, bent and she softly tapped on his wrists with its tip. Draco looked up with a start, and she gasped at his red-rimmed eyes. “Were you  _murdered_  again?”

“Drop it, Myrtle.” Draco’s attempt at a haughty drawl failed; he switched tactics and let his eyes flit about the bathroom, looking as carefree as he could manage. “Nothing happened. I’m here to, as you would say, pay you a visit.”

Myrtle tilted her face, her one hand caressing a braid; she would have blushed if not for the glow enshrouding her. “That’s very sweet of you,” she responded; then, faking a sigh as her not-so-slim hips gave a seductive swing, she proclaimed, “too bad I’ve got so many admirers already.”

 _Admirers?_  Draco would have laughed if he had dared to risk his life to a river of tears; life had, however, felt sufficiently intangible to him just moments ago.

Thus he opted for placation. “Too bad, indeed,” he said, his arms folded tighter against his chest.

Myrtle shot him a long look.

“Something’s going on with you,” she announced, and before Draco could refute, she swept forward, knocking him onto his back and holding him in check. “Men are such liars,” she concluded with a pout.

A vivid reminder this was, of Draco’s inability to resist confiding in her – appeasement never suited either of them. Also, Myrtle’s dramatic flair and recklessness, he admitted to himself, were qualities he himself rather possessed in abundance. Nonetheless, he doubted he would ever dive under anyone’s neckline –

“What are you doing?” he shrieked.

“Checking on you.” The pitch of Myrtle’s voice had sharpened, true to the tapered form of its owner. “I don’t see anything, though,” she continued, jiggling above Draco’s chest, “but I’ve never seen anyone so sweaty, so … slick.” A fit of giggles emerged as a chill crept down to Draco’s stomach, to his belly; a breeze then fluttered and lifted the waistline of his trousers. “Are you sure there’s nothing wrong—?”

“Fine! I’ll tell!”

Myrtle’s head popped out of his collar instantly and her neck curved impossibly backward; her face hovered a breath away from Draco’s. “I’m all ears.” She faked his drawl.

“Get out first. All of you.”

The ghost vanished again; a cold bolus of air caressed Draco’s torso before she wriggled out from below the loosened shirt end. “The abs can use some work,” Myrtle cooed as she stretched back to human form and retreated, another train of laughter in her wake.

“You’re a perv, you know that, don’t you?” Draco couldn’t help but smile, despite the shivers running along his entire body. The radiant silhouette of Myrtle flipped a quick somersault before settling on the tank in one of the stalls, and fished her glasses from her robes. Her eyes were intent upon him again, large and bright behind the lenses.

“Honestly, I wish I knew what to tell you,” Draco began, still lying supine on the floor. “Ever since … that  _murder_ —” he inhaled and unclasped the front of his robes, his fingers rubbing against the faint protrusion of his sternum, “—I’ve been having problems here; it hurts … all the way up my throat, as if the wound had never healed.”

“But there’re no cuts or scars,” Myrtle offered, “I really did look just now.” Draco nodded; he had always believed her. “I can only tell that there’s something funny inside.”

Draco sat up with a start. “You can feel it?”

“Ghosts can’t feel anything—” a cloud of familiar gloom rolled in when she responded, “—but we have good ears and can hear the tiniest movements from the vibrations alone. I usually can tell who’s coming here from floors above just from the signature of his heart; everyone’s unique, you know. Well, just now, I …”

She hesitated, scratching a finger against her scalp; a strand of hair loosened to form a loop on her immaculate braid. Draco read her thoughts.

“You couldn’t tell it was me.”

Myrtle shook her head. “The heartbeats were yours, I recognised them. It’s just that they … weren’t continuous. Some people’s hearts are very hard-to-hear — loads of them in the castle these days, but even theirs don’t come and go. It’s like … like …”

She paused again, and Draco continued for her, eyes shuttering closed. “My heart isn’t there sometimes.”

Myrtle’s silence was sufficiently affirmative; Draco chuckled sadly, his eyes still shut, “I’ve been missing it every now and then.” His voice trailed off, caught at his tongue was his confession that whenever he cast the Cruciatus curse his chest would hollow out, and the blood that was meant to return home would surge and spill, no longer having a place to go. For hours the heart would flit between existence and nonexistence, until exhaustion forced it to surrender, broken and despairingly pale in his imagination, to its prison of a ribcage. The accompanying pain, excruciating to begin with, had never ceased to escalate since the day of the  _Sectumsempra_.

How this had come to be was beyond comprehension, and Draco had already paid dearly for the consequences. He was fearful, to say the least – for what force could possibly steal the reins of a heart? What truth, if there was one to be known, could possibly bestow this power? While Myrtle had consoled him, enlightened him in ways he had not thought possible, he had deemed, with little reason, that these questions were meant to be answered only by himself.

He would do so when he was prepared.

Pulling the clasps on his robes back together, Draco remarked casually, “Enough about me. Now it’s your turn. Who are the admirers you’re talking about?”

Myrtle did not fall prey to his diversion tactics; instead, she demanded with a frown, “Did that black professor look at it?” Draco understood that she meant Severus Snape; she had once been a Ravenclaw, after all, and her acute sensibilities had been inseparable from her observational skills and an ability to draw quick analysis.

“No one can heal an invisible wound.” He shrugged lightly. “Headmaster Snape even gave me some dittany essence to prevent scarring—”  _and he wasn’t aware that the hurt has never stopped._

“Is he headmaster now?” Myrtle appeared almost too interested at the news. “And is he still moving furniture?”

Draco levelled his eyes with the ghost’s, willing her to continue.

“He came with a large mirror that night … an antique … some time around the beginning of the school year, and asked me for the spell to go down there. He—”

She clapped her hands to her mouth.

“His secret is safe with me.” Draco snickered in comprehension. “Where …?”

It took Myrtle a mere second to calm her conscience; the memory clearly brought her tremendous excitement – her eyes were wide and shining. Draco could almost see himself within the semi-translucent pupils.

“Anyway, it took some time for me to say it right. It was decades ago, but every syllable is still clear in my head! Only, it’s difficult to pronounce—all hisses and flicking tongues—but the pipe opened up in the end like it did for Harry and the what’s-his-name redhead and the cute professor—"

Draco would have jumped if exhaustion had not gotten the better of him; still, he could not help but lean towards the cubicle in which Myrtle was sitting. “Wait. This is the entrance to the Chamber of Secrets?”

Myrtle finally remembered to catch her breath. “Is that what that place in the dungeon is? It doesn’t matter, really—it’s nasty.” Her nose crinkled with disgust. “Bones and rotten bits lying all over the place. The black professor warned me about touching the fangs of the big dead snake … Right, like I would do that with a ten-foot pole. But then—” she dashed out of the stall, her body spiralled in a flourish under the candlelight, “— _it_  is there now; he charmed it to levitate behind us when we went inside—"

“Myrtle, you’re not making any sense!”

“The  _mirror_ , Draco, the mirror!” Myrtle almost wailed again in exasperation. “Oh, you just have to see it,” she decided, “maybe it’ll show you what’s happening with your heart, too.” She darted towards one of the sinks, her cold mist veiling her reflection on the spotted mirror; a moment later, she began to hiss.

It was Parseltongue. A scene flashed in Draco’s mind, of two young wizards learning to duel on a golden stage, splendid if only for the boys’ innocence. For a moment, he thought the world had been shrunk and placed into the hourglass of a giant Time-Turner, its ancient magic showering everything with white brilliance as the tap before him spun, and the basin below fell out from sight. When all was quiet in the bathroom again, he found himself staring at a large pipe that opened to nowhere.

“Go on,” Myrtle said; without waiting for his response, she swept him off his feet and shoved him inside.

The pipe was as deep as it appeared; it felt like a century had passed when the space levelled, and Myrtle guided him through twists and turns of the tunnel with the confidence and speed of a frequent visitor. The floor was littered with small bones, and once, after almost tripping on a skull, he stretched his arms to steady himself only to realise that the wall was the shed skin of giant snake. However, none of this fazed him, until he passed through an open doorway into a long, dimly lit chamber.

The Chamber of Secrets. He had known of the legendary room for as long as he could remember, and had fought all his glorious, if imaginary, battles there as well — armoured in his soft flannel robe, he had waved a twig as he had screamed “Die, Mudblood, die!” and toddled behind Dobby around in the cellar of the Manor, his very own Chamber of Secrets. It had been where he had always emerged victorious, at the blessings of none other than the spirit of Salazar Slytherin himself — a man he had imagined to look just like his father, sitting majestically on a throne woven by a giant serpent.

And now, the statue of Salazar Slytherin stood before him, its emaciated face undignified with the mouth agape. The serpents in the chamber, aplenty as they were, clung like dried worms on the pillars; whatever magic they once possessed had long deserted them, perhaps with the one they had hailed as King. The slain remains of the basilisk sprawled at the centre of the chamber, its deadly eyes decayed to empty pits, its powerful body rotten to nothing but skin tented by a scaffold of hollow bones.

Personifying the absurdity of it all was, perhaps, the ghost hovering above Draco. Heedless of the past that had terrorised the chamber, Myrtle was flaunting her curves as she gazed dreamily at the floor below; her spectacles were gone once again, and her eyelashes batted ferociously. She was enchanted, captivated —

Draco stepped forward and what charmed Myrtle soon became apparent; half-buried, half enclosed by the carcass of the basilisk was a magnificent mirror. It awakened with a flash, proceeded to radiate soft light that intensified from a deepening pool of white. The surface rippled, as if Draco’s imminent entry set off a breeze in the reflection.

Myrtle did not appear surprised at the changes before her; in fact, she did not seem to notice them, or him, at all.

“Do you see them?” she inquired breathlessly. “The boys … they all like me.”

But Draco was too mesmerised to respond; he stepped over the serpent, his boot meeting the floor sent another stir across the glowing sea; something broke free among the waves and drifted towards his hand that had found its way into the mirror — all it took was one glance of the white against his flesh, and Draco knew.

It was a feather of an albino peacock. He could almost feel the fine fringe of the eye brushing against his fingers, the heavier but still delicate vanes, sparse in their fishbone arrangement, touching upon his palm. The bare wrist above called attention to Draco that his image was unclothed; crossing his forearm over the edge of the ornate, golden frame, he found it unmarked as well. He fell on his knees and leaned forward for a closer look.

Poised, fearless, triumphant — as if a younger Draco Malfoy had returned from the past, disguised as the present man with subtle shades of gold along the jaw, blending flawlessly into the head of blond hair that curled ever so slightly upon the bare clavicles. Supple muscles of the abdomen rose and fell steadily, calm yet vigorous, on a body that seemed to be floating on its bed of illuminated feathers.

One by one, Draco undid the clasps of his robe; he was hyperventilating, his hands trembled. Obliged to mimic his moves, his twin in the mirror swiped his fingertips along the midline of his chest, a lazy dance on a vibrantly beating heart;  _humour me,_  challenged the grey eyes above the light smirk. It riled Draco, who, with his arms flexed to their limit, pulled the unfastened parts of his robe down his shoulders with one rough yank.

It was hollow again, where Draco’s heart had been – a concave dipping into his chest; yet, in the mirror, the flesh was bulging, pulsating. Draco stared at the near-replica of himself; it stared back.

“My admirers are cute, but you don’t have to strip for them,” Myrtle’s voice chimed beside his ears. The two of them were close, her silver flow filtering through the air just above him, her threads of cold interlacing with the warmth from the light under his knees.

Draco spoke slowly, disengaged himself from the trance he had been under. “I don’t see anybody in there, except, well, me, I suppose.” He finally turned to meet her eyes. “And there’s nothing around you either.” He hated to break it to her so harshly, but the day had exhausted him. “Sorry.” He choked at the word, still relatively new to his tongue — simply awkward at times, far too heavy more often.

The grin on her face faded into a sad curl of lips. “Oh, I know. I suspected that much,” she said, straightening her Ravenclaw tie in one clean gesture. “A girl can dream though, right? But thanks for checking for me, I’d wanted to make sure.”

“That’s why you brought me here?”

Myrtle glanced at him through her eyelashes. “Well, there’s that …”

Draco narrowed his eyes in mock aggravation.

“Well, and one of the boys … you may actually be more his type. Just in case he could see you too, I thought I’d introduce you,” she chuckled, “and I’m curious at what you see. Did you …?” She tapped a finger against her chest.

“Oh … There’s nothing in the mirror. No scars, no bloody wounds.” He was not lying, was he? His heart heaved feebly within him.

She lowered herself onto the floor, got down to her knees, too, to bring her face level with Draco’s. Silence filled the space between them; did Myrtle know Legilimency? Or was she curious at Draco’s sunken cheeks, the dark bags under his eyes?

She sighed.

“Whatever and whoever you see, you are welcomed to stay and come back in the evenings. I spend the nights in the lake.”

“Myrtle —”

“Shh.” The ghost hushed him as her braids arched upwards, so that the light surrounding them cupped Draco’s face. “You need to get yourself together. Keep your spirits up.” Her voice was sombre, and her wisdom shone. “I’ve never seen you happy before. If this worked for me, it’s worth a shot for you, too.”

“But what you’ve seen in the mirror is an illusion. You said so yourself.”

“I didn’t know that for the first week. I tried to get inside the mirror; that didn’t work. Then I slung mud on it, hauled rocks at it … nothing could break through the surface and it took forever to clean up the mess; the mirror was so reluctant to show its face. Finally I gave up and decided that, well, I did like what I saw in myself and that I could do something about. So I went to the lake —”

Draco could sense imminent joy in her words; a revelation, perhaps.

“I took a good, long bath … squeezed out the pimples, you know, and primped myself for a bit.” She brushed the braids with her hands and took a breath. “Then I met him.” Her voice fell to a hush.

“Good for you.” Draco smiled.

“We … just started,” Myrtle whispered sweetly. “He’s a selkie, and we’re meeting by the southern shore …”

“Go. I can find my way out later.” Draco waved his hand towards the tunnel access of the chamber. “Just one more thing, Myrtle. Don’t you have a care what the mirror shows at all?”

“I wouldn’t say that,” she said as her silver length glided towards the entrance. “I do enjoy having pretty boys fawning over me. The thing is—” she turned and looked at Draco one last time, “—who am I to ask for something real? I’m not real myself. But that’s different for you. So what if what you see is an illusion?”

The last of her words echoed in the narrow passageway as she drifted away. “You’re living, Draco. You can make it real.”

Draco collapsed onto the floor, his back flush against the spine of the basilisk beside him; head resting on the frame, he traced a finger along the vine relief on the mirror’s golden frame. His reflection was a thin crescent of carefree features from this angle, rimmed by a feather that caressed the skin as the one eyelid Draco could see drooped with fatigue.

And they slipped into slumber, he who lay beside an illusion and he who lay within it, and neither stirred until the distant songs of the merfolk drifted in from the waters above.

Morning had broken.

 

 

 

Fragile tendrils of smoke rose towards the ceiling of the Potions classroom, lingering among the haphazardly placed jars on the shelves.

Undesirable Number One watched over them from the precipice of the dungeon wall.

“As you must know by now, if any of you know of his whereabouts you’ll have to report to the Headmaster,” Horace Slughorn mumbled absentmindedly as he rummaged through the piles of parchment on his desk. “Honestly, the reasoning behind this massive postering is beyond me! Who would have forgotten him?” He chuckled, as if discussing the latest stretch of beautiful weather, “I certainly remember a fine Potions student … just like his mother,” he continued, overt admiration turned to an emphatic sigh, “just like his mother …” Only then did he lift his reading glasses to study the worn textbook he had finally recovered. “Ah, here it is.”

“Professor," Ernie Macmillan piped up, “so the rumours —”

“Oh, those!” Slughorn interrupted with a hearty laugh. “Juicy tales … I love them, every one of them! We’ll compare notes later on what we’ve heard!” He plucked his moustache, his prominent eyes bowed into fine, jovial arches. The fleeting glance he shot towards the Slytherins, however, had not gone unnoticed — not to Draco, at least. Macmillan opened his mouth again, only to snap it shut when Michael Corner kicked him under the table.

Unwilling to watch a Hufflepuff any more, Draco’s eyes drifted back to the display of their public enemy, the one person who should have roused every bit of abhorrence in its viewers. So it had been Snape’s idea to convert Hogwarts into a shrine to the Chosen One, to deck the halls with mementos of Saint Potter’s youth and bashful demeanour; Draco could not help wonder how the constant reminder of this face would reflect on the Dark Lord, who now seemed adamant to destroy a schoolboy, one who had insofar eluded him at every turn. Had the headmaster consulted with anyone before proceeding with this plan? Were they truthful with the responses?

Truth, after all, was a luxury few could afford these days; and truth –

“… is, by nature, elusive and perilous; thus defining the appropriate brewing protocol for Veritaserum has reflected similar difficulties.” Slughorn had begun his lecture with a reading from one of the last pages of  _Advanced Potions Making_. “Very appropriate lesson after what we’ve just discussed!” he exclaimed, snapping the book closed. “Now, some may have read already that Veritaserum is in effect a concoction of three antidotes, thus requiring a fortnight from the initial preparation to the end of the brewing process. Who can tell me, for which potions the three are antidotes for?”

Silence ensued before Slughorn bellowed a deep peal of laughter. “How can I forget that we’re missing Granger! Shall we begin, then, with me naming the potions: the Draught of the Living Dead, Polyjuice and Amortentia. So, who can venture a guess of why?”

After a moment of hesitation, Ernie Macmillan and Terry Boot chimed in simultaneously, “Vigilance.” “Unity.”

“Good. Good.” Slughorn nodded his approval, very much enthused. “What about the last one?” Bowed heads and sideway glances met him. “Ah, you’re still at the age when this is embarrass—”

“ _Amor caecus est,_ ” Draco murmured, not knowing what had compelled him to speak.

“Indeed, Mr Malfoy.” Slughorn’s cheer had given way to surprise; Draco could not blame him, for he had rarely been attentive in this class since sixth year. “You’ve told us instead the effect of the potion itself:  _Love is blind_ ; thus its antidote opens the eyes to the truth.” He paused, then announced dramatically, “Theoretically speaking.”

He walked towards his desk and retrieved a glass vial from the drawer. Sealed within it was a small, maroon cube, speckled like rusted iron and suspended in a translucent, viscous liquid.

“This is the proper antidote of Amortentia. Consider yourself very lucky to have seen one.”

Blaise Zabini kicked back his chair. “Love potions and their antidotes are nothing special,” he hollered, “Weas— that ridiculous shop in Hogsmeade sells a whole variety of them.”

“You have addressed an important point.” Slughorn’s brows furrowed; nonetheless, his eyes twinkled with mischief, a clue that Zabini had taken a deliberate bait. Soon, indeed, the Potions master leaned forward, his sight level with the audience’s for a quiet announcement, “but commercial Love Potions never incorporate Amortentia. No one can afford to sell such a potent potion without offering its antidote.”

He straightened and began to pace slowly across the room, the gold buttons on his waistcoat gleaming in the torchlight.

“Amortentia is the queen of love potions for good reasons. Its effects, as with any other love potions, are strictly imaginary, but it is unfailingly accurate in showing one truth, one that is, perhaps, the most difficult to attain from the brewer - where his heart lies when lust, worldly desires and social constraints fall away. This love is pure, enlightens rather than blinds … and this power of Amortentia to call upon self-knowledge, to relieve the burden of the soul, is surprisingly also the most critical ingredient of Veritaserum.” Slughorn weighed the vial lightly in his palm. “A proper antidote of the potion, therefore, only seeks to inhibit its effects without inducing fundamentals change in the potion’s property. This presents a challenge to teach," he sighed, before addressing the class again, “which is exacerbated by the lack of universal recipes for antidotes of a potion that is, by nature, individualised.”

Commotion followed these words. “So we’ll not be able to make Veritaserum after all this talk?” It was Zabini again. “Where’s the serum from if there’s no way to brew it?” He regarded the professor coldly. “I’d think some old fart just want to keep the knowledge to himself, that’s all.”

Slughorn was not offended in the least. He stepped over to a glass cauldron that had been bubbling since the lesson had begun, and stirred the raven black contents inside. “Veritaserum is part of the N.E.W.T. curriculum because hopefully by this time, the students can appreciate that Potions is more than a chop-and-cook ceremony. Like all fields of magic, its outcome is highly dependent upon the wizard who follows the instructions; unlike all fields of magic, the act of potion making does not necessarily require magical abilities. Muggles are perfectly capable of brewing some of the most powerful draughts.”

Zabini snorted loudly.

“Potions is, therefore, a study for all men—” Slughorn placed the ladle back onto the dish on the bench-side; both were made of glass and chimed melodiously on contact, effectively stoppering further outpour of disdain, “—and Veritaserum has traditionally been honed as the ultimate proof of this point, because when it comes to matters of the heart, the abilities of the wizard really makes no difference. The brewer of the antidote to Amortentia only has to interpret the scent given by the potion correctly and accept it without reservation…”

“That can’t be that difficult, can it?” interrupted Terry Boot, still pondering. “Say, for someone who’s happily married for decades, this knowledge should be automatic. It’s unlikely he would have any problems with it.”

“Ah—” Slughorn nodded in appraisal, “—it’s natural to assume, isn’t it? But the human heart is deceiving, and in return, easily deceived by its own intricacies, by ulterior motives … by less than glorious rationales that our mind is all too happy to overlook. A married man may also benefit from the comfort of home, from having a spouse to share his life’s burdens —”

“There’s nothing wrong with that,” Boot argued.

“No, but Amortentia does not take morality or practicality into consideration. Certain magical objects behave similarly as well; for example, the legendary Mirror of Erised—"

 _Mirror_. The one in the Chamber of Secrets, guarded by a lifeless basilisk, became visible in Draco’s mind; his quill slipped and somersaulted onto the floor.

Slughorn gave the lone, fallen feather a furtive glance as he continued, “—thus interpreting the scent is difficult, for it may derive from wishes that the brewer has little knowledge or memory of. By extension, it becomes nearly impossible for him to accept these wishes as his own. This antidote here —" he gave the vial a small shake; the cube spun peacefully within its glass confines, “– is borne of a volatile, highly toxic concoction; it crystallizes only when such  _truths_  of the heart are known.”

A brief pause ensued. “No one has been able to solve this problem, not even the most senior of Potion masters —” Slughorn’s voice became sombre, light as if it was addressing the antidote alone, “— not that the failures aren’t a saving grace for them. For acceptance of the heart’s desires is unlike verbal acknowledgements, which are empty promises, after all; full acceptance requires of willingness to give up all he possesses in the name of those wishes.”

“You mean, like a monk or something?” Zabini jeered.

Slughorn looked up, once again armoured with his usual cheer. “Oh! Material wealth is easy enough to forfeit; it’s relative, of course, there’re certain luxuries I’m frankly quite unwilling to part with myself!” He patted his belly and took a bite of the crystallised pineapple placed on his desk. “But possession is defined in a much broader sense here; one’s family notwithstanding, it also includes his life and his integrity, which one may consider to be even more precious than life itself … ”

Ernie Macmillan fumbled with the notes in his fingers, the parchment crackling at his unease. “That sounds mightily dangerous.”

“Not as dangerous as it is tragic.” Slughorn made no secret of his fondness for Macmillan, who was always mesmerised by the professor’s showmanship in lectures. “It often means that there’s little to live for to begin with. Also, from a historical perspective, few had been able to see and submit to the true longing of their heart until the object of affection was permanently, irreversibly lost; their willingness to give up everything did not change a thing.”

He held up the vial once more and observed the floating cube of antidote imprisoned within. “The ability to brew Veritaserum is therefore both a curse and a triumph. That’s an awful price to pay for any skill; the few brewers who I’ve known, they all seem to have … forfeited a slice of their humanity.” He hesitated yet again. “Hopefully, this isn’t too much to give away.” His face tilted towards a shelf of organized but unlabeled ingredients, the very few that had remained untouched since the end of Severus Snape’s tenure; a shadow fell upon it. “Whether it was a side effect of the potions making or the tragedies that had struck them before, I haven’t dared to ask. They have all died so young as well …”

“Suicide?” Draco wondered aloud; a mysterious force must have struck him—

“Technically, no. But they tend to place little value in their own lives and throw it away in the most imaginative way possible.” Slughorn’s eyes curved into arches again, just prior to a seemingly light-hearted inquiry. “Much enthused in the lesson today, Mr Malfoy? I shouldn’t be surprised … shouldn’t be surprised at all.” Slughorn looked away and shoved the last slice of crystallised pineapple into his mouth. “The Headmaster may be able to impart more wisdom on this subject in your meetings with him! I’ve done enough talking for today.” His sugar-coated fingers dusted his waistcoat as they trailed across his belly. “It’s time for a quick demonstration.”

The students gathered around the cauldron, in which the antidotes of the Sleeping Draught and the Polyjuice Potion had been simmering. Slughorn brought the flames to white heat, and when the concoction began to heave violently, he cracked open the sealed vial and poured its content into the cauldron.

“Must be very careful—the antidote doesn’t survive in air …” he said, wiping his forehead with the cuff of his sleeve. The cube broke as it fell, fractured into residues that battled the violent boils before they all dissolved; the concoction calmed into a colourless fluid, clear as water, and one could see right through it, past the glass cauldron walls to discern every reflection on the buttons of Slughorn’s waistcoat. Draco almost could see himself —

“We’ve never used glass cauldrons,” he remarked.

The Potions master, who was lowering the flames for aging, paused to address him. “That’s a practical consideration,” he explained, with a sincerity he had rarely offered Draco; proper choice of cauldrons was fundamental to the art of potion making, after all. “Veritaserum certainly looks … inconsequential, but the truth is, it clings irreversibly to all reflective substances — metals, glass, even water.”

“But you can clean this—?”

“Depends on how one defines  _clean_!” Slughorn broke into a hearty laugh before returning to his task and steadied the cauldron on the flames. “The truth is, we throw the glass into the snake pit, so to speak — a tank of the worst and most severe corrosives. The dregs are gone afterwards — only because the former skin of the cauldron has been peeled away.” He wiped a finger against a spilled drop of potion on the curved handle; the dark fluid usurped the clarity of the underlying glass. “Sounds terrible, doesn’t it? But then, a fresh layer of its old self is exposed – one that has never seen light before.”

 

 

 

The first storm of the school year finally struck that late afternoon. Heavy rain pounded on the windows, obliterating the eastern mountains to a void that seemed to span into the heavens.

Thunder roared in the distance, trailing the sharp lightning that threatened to split open the sky. It was comforting in a way, for there had never been a time when Draco Malfoy had met the Gryffindors without commotion, without so much as a clash. He stiffened, his knuckles white as they gripped the edge of Snape’s wooden desk. Longbottom and the youngest Weasley stood on the other side, his calm and dirty blond hair complementing her glare and fiery mane. Across the office by the fireplace, Luna was surveying and straightening the silver instruments, humming a soft tune fragmented by the pelting of the rain.

“Introductions are apparently in order.” The Headmaster smirked at the staring match before him and leaned back in his chair, his fingertips drumming against each other. “Miss Weasley and Mr Longbottom, this is Mr Malfoy.” His lips thinned to a line. “He is in charge of your detention today.”

“I know who he is,” spat Ginny; Neville put a hand on her forearm.

Snape paid no attention. “And Mr Malfoy, this is Miss Weasley and Mr Longbottom. You already know that Mr Longbottom is serving detention for defacing school properties with poorly worded advertisements; I had a word with Professor Carrow that a  _dunderhead_  who recruits his peers for an army, who chooses a dead man for a mascot should not hinder the progress of his class. As for Miss Weasley —” mockery oozed from every syllable of the name, “— she’s demonstrated similar poor taste in a vulgar proclamation of teenage lust …”

Lovegood, still intent upon a miniature steam engine, chimed in airily as she fumbled with a dial, “Oh, Professor, but they’re not dating anymore.”

The corner of Snape’s lips curled ever so slightly. “I’m not here to discuss your romantic lives, Miss Lovegood, and may I ask why are you here uninvited?”

The Ravenclaw placed the engine carefully back on the table, watched it chug on merrily as she replied, “I wanted to see the Headmaster’s office. Nifty. I like it.” Her wide eyes wandered around the room, taking in every relief and embellishment of old before addressing the Headmaster, “They’re my friends; we’re hanging out.”

“I see.” Snape took a sip from his tumbler; the unmistakable fragrance of elderflowers danced lightly in the air. “Then I suppose you would not object to spending time with Mr Malfoy as well.”

A shrug was all that Luna indicated; she traversed the office with a few weightless steps before halting behind Draco, adjacent to the glass case in which the ruby-studded sword was displayed. “That’s the Sword of Gryffindor. Look, Ginny! This is what Harry saved you with.” Her excitement was infectious; she shuffled her feet and a big smile set her face alight.

Surprisingly, the Headmaster did not interfere; perhaps, he was too intent on downing his drink, which he refilled again and again. The strings between the numerous buttons on his robe stretched to their limits as he took in deep breaths between gulps, reining in the last reminders of humanity in a man who had seemed determined to seclude himself from the world.

Or were the laces and buttons there to guard the humanity that had remained inside him, now that he had been so treasured by the Dark Lord? The room was heavy with the wine’s fragrance, as if one could possibly wallow and drown to death with its softness.

The tumbler finally struck against the desk surface.

Snape stood; the train of his black robe no longer billowed, burdened by a weight leaden and invisible as death. When the Headmaster brutally drew the sword away from Weasley’s line of vision, the sallow face fell with frustration, not anger as Draco had expected.

“Enough,” he spat; it further stoked the flame in Weasley’s narrowed eyes. “Detention shall proceed. Draco, you should practice your  _spell work_  with Mr Longbottom. As for Miss Weasley and Miss Lovegood …” He shot a look at Draco, the cold gleam in his eyes warmed to offer just a glimpse of their actual depths, of a buried sentiment that should have no place between the heir of a disgraced family and the man who had usurped its power — namely, trust. “I’ll let you decide on the penalty for such crude declarations of love.”

“Like you know what love is.” Ginny smirked at both of them; the resemblance of her arrogant defiance to the Golden Boy’s was striking.

Snape turned towards her. “Insolence.” It came as a mere statement, devoid of emotions. The gaze from the black eyes searched the greying horizon, and in that moment Draco saw something he had never seen on the face of the former Potions master.

Damage beyond repair.

Draco wondered if the Fates had found a Death Eater worthy to behold truths – truths that begot knowledge, knowledge that bred power; yet somewhere on this balance, there weighed an irreconcilable grief unbeknownst to him.

The Headmaster had stepped away to face the window. “I’ll remove the ward from the Astronomy Tower; proceed there for the detention after dinner. Given the pigheadedness of present company, this will, I expect, become a routine for many days to come.” He paused at a stroke of lightning. “And while you acquaint yourself to one another, perhaps Miss Weasley can explain how Potter became Undesirable Number One, how the Ministry believes Potter to have a hand in Professor Dumbledore’s demise.” The black eyes shot daggers towards Draco, colder and sharper than the fissure that had just split the clouds behind him. “I expect you all to learn your lessons. Dismissed.”

Draco could barely keep his composure as he fled the office; his skin was soaked with sweat, and his muscles taut like steel. He twisted his neck with an effort towards the Headmaster; the man’s face was hidden from his view, but its reflection was clear and crisp on the glass, white against the overcast heavens beyond the mountains where the storm had risen and the sun begun its descent from the sky.

 

 

 

As Snape had predicted, Draco began to spend almost every evening with Longbottom, Weasley and Lovegood on the Astronomy Tower. Each night, the two Gryffindors would come up with new methods of rebellion; every day, Lovegood would tag along, simply delighted to be in the company of friends — who, much to Draco’s apprehension, soon included himself as well. “Draco.” She would call his first name, which he had never given her permission to use, as she beamed and skipped towards him from the Great Hall, ready for another night of detention.

He would have befriended the Head Boy too, Draco thought, if he had blatantly ignored every single school rule only to be rewarded with petty punishments and a private headquarters to boot. The Astronomy Tower had been declared off limits due to its unobstructed view of Hogsmeade and beyond, a weak joint in the Dark Lord’s almost seamless wartime defence, a crack in a fortress through which light could infiltrate. Its view of the stars and planets was regarded with even greater distaste, for they offered treacherous foresights that had never failed to instigate the wrath of their Lord. How else could one explain the cancellation of the practical curriculum for Astronomy, a knowledge that pure-bloods had honed for millenniums, or the demise of Divination into an hourly routine of sipping Earl Grey and wild interpretations of tea dregs?

There was fear, and Draco could smell a waft of its stench, carried by the cold wind that spiralled down the roof of the Tower. Merely an hour had passed after dinner, but darkness had already consumed all that was in sight, from the villages to the moors beyond the mountains. It was unseasonably cold for mid-November, and the mist that had cloaked the landscape during the day had frozen into icicles on the crenel. Fragments of dirt lay buried beneath the hardened crust of water, as were carcasses of numerous small spiders. Draco wondered whether it could have been the stench of death that had lured the arachnids there, or the remnant of fear—his own—that had refused to dissipate even when his guilt had been lifted, on the day when Potter’s portrait had become as ubiquitous as Merlin’s over the wizarding world.

It had been exactly a month ago, when he had stood here and sent Ginny to the simple task that had been her first detention – to tear down every poster of Potter in the corridors around the castle. In her blinding rage, she had failed to notice the tremor in his drawl when he had called Potter a  _near-miss_  murderer; he had ignored it himself, presuming it to stem from a crazed schadenfreude, from hearing Potter in slandered to fill his own role as a sinner on that fateful night.

Hours later, after he had stolen his way into the Chamber of Secrets again, he had realised it had been but a sign of the metamorphosis of his monster within. Once upon a time, in the din of triumphant shouts from the Death Eaters, Fear had crawled quietly upon his skin, light as Dumbledore’s robe that had flapped and caught on the battlement before tearing away in his violent descent. It had assumed the shape of the predator of criminals — an amalgam of shame and dread of being discovered, and had haunted him until Potter, in his glorious absence, had still managed to transform it into an even more terrifying beast, one that had bored itself so deeply into Draco that he could no longer see it, no longer isolate or distinguish it from himself.

And Draco had seen the evidence of its sharpened fangs and claws in the enchanted mirror; not of its true form but rather of what it had failed to become — a man, a soul unburdened by sins. That night in the Chamber of Secrets, his twin lounged easily in the reflection, looking ever more blissful along the opposite edge of the mirror than Draco had first seen him. The bed of feathers was still present, but then, the feathers had become more orderly, the light more radiant; the blond hair no longer blended into the white vanes; rather, it flowed over them, tracing over dips and curves …

Draco had almost forgotten Myrtle’s advice when he reached forward,  _there’s something beneath the feathers,_  his instinct chanted,  _someone_. The softly cascading sheen from the hair of the reflection rocked gently at a rhythm calm as its owner’s heartbeat, but it didn’t beat in time with Draco’s heart; instead, it appeared to respond to another set of contractions, one equally mellow and at peace with the world – as if his twin in the mirror was lying in the arms of a companion, his hair rising and falling to the chest it had fanned upon.

When he caught himself, his hand had already feathered the mirror. Draco expected a cool, impenetrable surface to meet his skin, but it was softness that welcomed him.

And warmth.

He and his twin exchanged a look of amazement; simultaneously, their hands extended just a breath’s distance further towards one another. The tips of their fingers vanished, the middle joints of their digits merged and fused into one.

The reaction was spontaneous and immediate — both men retracted as if they had just touched the vilest of Dark artefacts. To Draco, it brought a burning awareness – an enveloping passion that fired every nerve cell within him, its strength steering his mind and body into overdrive. Meanwhile, in the mirror, the contact unleashed violent tremors beneath the bare flesh of his twin reflection, whittling away the tranquility of the living portrait with what seemed to be an assault of bone-searing chill. The wide-eyed look remained true to Draco’s expression, mired by equal measures of incredulity and trepidation.

Could the mirror be a gateway to a haven? One cleansed from the cold truths of reality, neither knowing the disquiet of war, nor the solitude of those who must live with it?

Draco was no stranger to voices whispering to him in his most vulnerable moments. They spoke of what might have been, of what the future might hold; he used to let rage overtake them, and tantrums mangle his regrets and his dreams. At this moment, however, when the voices' words were illustrated, clear as day, on this magical mirror hidden in the depths of the Chamber of Secrets, Draco was too drained by the trials of the day but to allow resignation to trickle in, to pacify him with something akin to acceptance — he acknowledged that an imprint of himself existed in another dimension, living a life he could neither understand nor want.

Thus he curled himself up into a foetal position beside the golden frame of the mirror, and watched as his reflection followed suit; when the still shivering figure across from him had settled, the peacock feathers that Draco had once thought to amass to a bed lifted and wrapped loosely around its owner, revealing themselves as a vast blanket held together by rays of light. It was then that Draco’s intuition was confirmed; for there, still veiled by the feathers and holding his mirror image from shoulders down towards the waist, was the relief of a pair of lean, muscular arms. Behind the blond head were the almost discernable features of a man, seemingly taking in the scent of the blond hair with the gentle projection of a nose, above lips that pressed, perhaps, in for a kiss.

Regardless of their movements, the blanket of feathers formed an absolute visual barrier between this man and Draco in the mirror; despite the men’s intimacy, it resolutely divided them. Did his twin know in whose embrace he was lying? Draco could not make him turn to face the man; he would have to look away from the mirror himself –

A night of insomnia and scrutiny had ensued; thoughts had woven and unravelled themselves around the images, yet had yielded more speculations than conclusions; Draco had come to suspect that the light might have radiated from the man himself, and the enhanced brilliance he had observed had been due to the man taking form behind the veil of feathers, becoming more distinct from, yet intimate with, his twin in the reflection.

But amidst the confusion and obscurities, certain musings had agglomerated into truths, their emergence inevitable as Draco’s from the Chamber as the sun had risen: he could not allow Potter taking on his own role in the tragedy on the Astronomy Tower; it would have been an infringement of their fates, no doubt destined to be polar in the schemes of this world. And at the feeble workings of his heart, already weary of the new day and the anguish it might bring, Draco had wilfully ignored the last of the mirror’s imparted wisdom.

_If Potter shall ever fall from grace by becoming a murderer, then his victim shall be no one but me._

It had been wise to banish those words from contemplation over the past month. The present recaptured Draco’s attention as faint, high-pitched buzzes, which he had learned to associate with Weasley’s fulminations; they traversed the invisible barricade of  _Muffliato_ , cast religiously by his convicts every night.

Splinters, sharp as her accusatory shouts, formed an inapproachable armour sheltering her cracking exterior, the last defence to her grief.

Potter would kill. Soon. The moment she would finally shatter would be when he had truly earned the title “Undesirable Number One”, when finally this absurd arrangement of detention would come to its end; the  _Trio Minor_  would cease to settle by the landing of the staircase that spiralled to the pinnacle of the Astronomy Tower; he would no longer exile himself onto the ramparts, the howling winds closing in on him like the inescapable realities of war and the memories of his role in its making.

Not once had Draco practiced the  _Cruciatus_  on Longbottom, who had repaid him by placating Weasley’s animosity and claiming before Snape and Carrow that Draco’s Unforgivables had incurred formidable damages. The Gryffindor was a second-rate liar at best, yet somehow, he never roused the suspicion of the usually cautious and sceptical Headmaster. Consequently, the spiteful DADA instructor could do little but fume in the background.

These  _confession sessions_  held deep in the dungeons were, in effect, revivals of the meetings of the Inquisitorial Squad, except the accused were also brought in, expected to chastise their own crimes, recite epiphanies from recent detentions and express gratitude towards the enforcers. While these meetings had also been the highlights of Draco’s days two years ago, the reasons now were entirely different; his current enjoyment was shared by Longbottom, judging from the quiet pleasure on the round face after dismissal. It had become an unspoken understanding between them, obscure as the task that Draco had finally assigned to them – he would never let them abscond entirely, and as Weasley had duly noted, never allow the chance to enslave them slip through his fingers for once and for all.

The single chime of a bell signalled the official start of curfew, even though the school had long been deserted by this time. For those who surrendered to the Dark, it was time to gratify the Lord and execute his plans; for the few whose resolution to revolt were not deterred by the price there was to pay, it signalled the time to venture into the corridors for their fruitless rebellion, a self-proclaimed candle in the dark in all its naive, juvenile glory. Thus the Muffliato Charm lifted to the usual crescendo of feet shuffling and the clasps of book-bags being fastened, but the quick whispers were replaced by Weasley’s cutting speech.

“He can go camping in hell with whomever —”

The wooden door leading up to the rampart opened slowly, the joints wailing a forlorn soliloquy amidst the howling of the winds. Draco could even hear Longbottom’s hushed response of something that sounded like  _what Potterwatch said_  as a dim, speckled sapphire light fanned out into the night.

Lovegood was standing at the apex of it, her hands cupping a small blue flame. It was undoubtedly one of the several that had been providing them with light and warmth since their first evening of detention on the Astronomy Tower, each cradled in a glass jar levitated just above the landing. The spell had been Granger’s gift for them, Longbottom had said. Luna huddled it with the care of a mother for her child as she approached Draco.

“We finished lining these along the fourth floor corridors yesterday,” she reported sweetly, cooing towards the magical fire. “We’ll be starting on the third floor now. The Disillusion charm’s a brilliant idea, Draco! No one’s spotted them and we can find our way around the castle at night.” She leaned in and he felt a soft kiss on his cheek, an innocent one ordinarily reserved for well-thought gifts rather than detention orders. His astonished look apparently did little to faze her; instead, she held out the flame, sapphire petals of joy blossoming on the small face. “It’s getting cold out here. This one’s for you.” She beamed at him as Draco reluctantly took the glass jar from her hands, feeling the heat tingling under his fingers before it spread to warm every cell in his body. The sensation was heartier than any Warming Charm could ever be.

Lovegood’s shadow retreated back towards the inside of the Tower, the flow of her robe in the violent night air still light as wings of butterflies in early spring. For one moment, his eyes met with Longbottom’s; then, as the blue light tapered to a slit by the closing door, Weasley turned abruptly and looked his way.

The distance between them should have forbidden any close scrutiny; the radiance illuminating her face should have blinded his eyes that were accustomed to the dark, but Draco saw it all the same – a shimmering streak free-falling as it reflected the flames’ brilliance.

Ginevra Weasley, the girl who never cried, was shedding a tear for Harry Potter.

 

 


	4. Part III

The first sign of the holidays approaching would also be the last; it arrived at Hogwarts when the last leaves spiralled from the oak trees — not via owl post, but delivered by an old house-elf who Draco failed to recognise. “Mrs Malfoy sent me,” the creature croaked as bony fingers retrieved a bundle from his crisp tea-towel toga.

It was unlike any previous gift Draco had received from his mother. The lavish packaging was replaced by a chunky Slytherin jumper, seemingly new but outmoded, which wrapped around a crystalline casket. The hollow within was almost egg-shaped, if not for the mild skewing towards one tapered end, and measured roughly half the size of a Bludger. The translucent facets at once appeared unbreakable and fragile in the bluebell flame that accompanied him on the battlement.

The house-elf was scrutinizing his every move; the sunken eyes could not conceal a deep-seated scorn, as incongruent with his proper but plain outfit as the luxurious golden locket hanging low from his neck, swinging gently before his stooping frame. He showed no blatant animosity towards Draco, but the unease was clear.

It was infectious as well, and Draco distanced himself from the elf as he opened the casket and smoothed the small piece of parchment folded inside; his mother’s elegant handwriting had fallen into disarray. She wrote:

_  
Draco,_

_Since owl posts are screened, I am sending you my love by means of Kreacher. He is no longer at our family’s disposal, but I will ask you to refrain from asking about his current master, as his reaction may compromise your safety. All I shall say is that he has served us well and is living proof that unwavering loyalties need not be exclusive, and subordination does not necessitate a crushing of the will._

_Please forgive me for the disorderly state of the package; the casket, which you have no doubt uncovered since this message is contained within it, should be a rightful Malfoy heirloom. Your father has made his disagreement quite clear, but my instincts insist that this is meant for something extraordinary, a relic that will lift us from savage beasts or fiery seas — it has proven itself unshrinkable and impervious to all revealing charms and destructive spells I have conjured. Thus I trust you to keep it safe, in case it becomes misplaced during the hectic daily occurrences at the Manor._

_The jumper is an old one of your father’s, knitted by an aunt of yours while we were still in school; he has never worn it and I doubt he ever will._

_Worry not, my son, we are safe. However, given our many responsibilities this season, it may not be an ideal time for you to return to Wiltshire for Christmas. I would like you to remain in Hogwarts, and be sure to report to the Headmaster should any problems arise._

_I must stop now. My last favour to ask of you, Draco, is to never mention this letter to your father. Also, while I have paid Kreacher handsomely for this delivery, it seems he may demand more. Appease him._

_Take good care of yourself, and never forget that you are what makes my heart, my treasure._

_Mother  
_

 

Kreacher’s long ears flapped briskly as Draco carefully folded the letter back into a small square and returned it to the casket. The house-elf showed no signs of departing, however; instead, he muttered into the stillness of this night, “Kreacher lives to serve and the pies are cold, oh, what would Master say, what would Master do ...?” Somehow he found the strength to straighten his frame, and his huge, pale eyes glowed like glass orbs in the moonlight. “Master leaves and Master dies, oh how Kreacher waits, how Kreacher cries; Master leaves and Master dies … Kreacher makes pies and pies are cold …”

If Kreacher had lost his master, Draco thought, his family might stand a chance of claiming his possession; it would be convenient to have a house-elf under his command. Cradling his mother’s gifts to his chest, he knelt beside the elf and whispered, a precaution against the trio returning to the Tower during their detention responsibilities.

“Shut up, Kreacher.”

The house-elf flung his head dramatically sideways, but disregarded Draco’s command. Rather, his croaking hastened to a frenzy, as if making a death plea to the forests below —

“Master dies; Kreacher fails. Oh, how disappointed Master is, how he wants to change ...” His hand gripped the golden locket tightly at the pause. “Kreacher carries out his Master’s bidding. Kreacher finds the thief Master wants. Oh, how he thinks Master is pleased, then Master leaves the Noble House of Black and Potter …” He dashed towards the stone wall and swung back his head —

“Stop!”

Without rhyme or reason, Draco felt a strong desire to pull the house-elf away from the wall. He was neither fast enough, however, and he stood at a wrong angle; thus he did what he could — he shot out his arm to shield Kreacher’s skull from the stone.

The impact was dampened, at the price of jagged rocks cutting into Draco's flesh; he let out a yelp of pain. Kreacher’s aged body was bent again, but his eyes, impossibly wide, refused to leave Draco as he stepped backwards, his one hand still tugging on the golden chain while the other rubbed against the contour of his scalp.

Fine stretches of peeled skin had formed upon Draco’s Dark Mark, blanching the snake and skull with jagged lines of white. He now knew what he would like to ask Kreacher, or more specifically, about whom.

_The Noble House of Black and Potter._

But his mother’s advice spoke to him through the warmth of the sweater, still held close to his burdened heart.

“Go. Just go,” Draco said.

Kreacher did not budge; his haggard features remained tense, his desire to punish himself subdued to a brutal twisting of his long ears; the younger house-elves in the manor had never behaved like this. The mumbling then resumed, vicious and desperate, “Master’s bidding is the law of the house-elves. Oh, why does Master desert Kreacher when he is alive? Kreacher lives to serve …”

Draco rummaged his pocket for the Galleons he got; he had never paid a house-elf before, had always thought them of less value than a Knut. But Kreacher belonged to Potter, and he —

The clatter of a Galleon on the battlement was deafening in the eerie silence of the evening.

No response came from the elf. Draco threw another, then another to no avail, until he had exhausted all but one — the one with the Protean Charm that Professor Snape used to inform him about the password to the Headmaster’s Office. He clutched it in his hand and felt warmth radiating from it; Snape must have just left and reset the key for the night.

He had to pacify the creature, not resort to violence. “What do you want, Kreacher?” he spat. “You can’t stay.”

Kreacher examined him, inch by inch, searching ravenously for a gift, for something that he desired. He was nothing but a slave, Draco kept reminding himself, but it seemed to make little difference when the small frame hunched in predatory stance, the large eyes sharp and hungry. His mother had never trusted or treated with kindness any of the pitiful house-elves his father had bought, and instead had placed her faith in … this. His arms folded defensively across his chest; as he did, a small twinkle flashed across Kreacher’s face — it was the moon’s reflection from Draco's cuff links – a small, old pair with the Malfoy emblem barely visible on its scratched surface.

“Kreacher likes this.” The long fingers shot towards one of them immediately, at a speed that such old age should not have permitted. He did not bother to wait for Draco’s permission; " _Accio_ ", the house-elf hollered towards the clasps, the withered lips curled into what could be a grimace or a smile. Exhibiting the efficiency of a seasoned slave, he quickly brushed the “M”s on the metal with the pad of thumb, akin to a soldier estimating his latest spoils from a war; then, he proceeded to open the locket and place the cuff links inside.

With another Summoning Charm, every Galleon that had showered the stone floor congregated in Kreacher’s wrinkled palms. “Remind Kreacher of all his Masters and Mistresses,” the house-elf chanted as he handed the coins to Draco, before the jaws tightened to a clench and he completed the sentence with all his might.

“ _You_  do.”

A loud pop ensued, and the creature was gone. Alone again on the battlement, Draco realised that he had never heard of house-elves addressing wizards as equals.

Perhaps, in Kreacher’s eyes, he was no better than a servant of Master Potter, or perhaps it was Kreacher who had risen from his fate of enslavement for this one moment. Draco was unable to tell, but somehow, he felt by an unexpected warmth of companionship, tangible as the residual heat of the Galleons in his hands — heat that could not have originated from a single charmed coin alone, heat that only blood and life could supply. As it combated the late autumn chill, an old memory sifted in his mind — of Dobby’s plea when a young Master Malfoy had used to question his loyalty.

 _House-elves are bound to serve one house and one family forever_.

An absurd thought came to Draco —  _One House of Black and Potter. One family._  He snickered, cast the Disillusion Charm on the bluebell flame and left the jar on a crenel, disguising the magical fire as a mere reflection of the silver moon.

The crystal casket in one hand and the Galleons in the other, Draco left the Astronomy Tower, the moonlight flowing down through the narrow lancet windows as his guide. Several bluebell flames greeted him as he passed the seventh floor corridor, and there was the trio standing by the guardian gargoyle of the Headmaster’s Office, their book bags cast to one side in a heap and the sleeves of their robes rolled up. Before they saw him, Draco slid behind the corner of the stairwell.

“We’ve tried every possible password,” Longbottom said quietly, “let’s go back and think through this—"

“That sword belongs to Harry!” Weasley gave the stone statue a hard kick. “We’ll get it and send it to him somehow. He needs it.” Her strained whispers were threatening to explode with fury and despair.

“We don’t know where he is yet.” Longbottom pulled her back, seemingly effortlessly. “And you need rest, Ginny. We’ll come back with another list of potions ingredients tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow. Always tomorrow.” Weasley emitted a bitter laugh. “Your plants live forever, Neville, but who knows what another day will do to Harry?” She pried herself away from her friend. “I won’t give up.”

“I know. And I won’t, either.” Longbottom declared solemnly; Lovegood nodded beside him.

Weasley forced a smile and responded in strained calmness. “You two head back first. Hide the flames, if that’s okay – I’ll come in a while.” She raised a hand in an attempt to roll her sleeves down, but her fingers were stiff and trembling; all she managed was a rough yank on the fabric and a ripple of monotonous clicks echoed in the corridor. “Shit! Lost the buttons ...,” she spat under her breath.

“Ginny —” Longbottom began.

The blue flames were all Disillusioned at that same moment. School bags rustled, blended with Lovegood’s airy plea, “Neville, why don’t we go then? Ginny can come later. I’m hungry, and some rose petals for a snack would be nice.”

She must have put out the light to save Weasley’s embarrassment.

Draco watched the bluebell flames planted during the past month being lit and extinguished intermittently along mirroring trajectories, one heading towards the Gryffindor dormitory in the south while the other advancing to the Ravenclaw Tower in the north. Further and further they separated, until the flames in both directions were all but faint specks in the distance.

Darkness consumed the air once again. Holding his breath, Draco inched into the hallway, knowing he was not the only one watching the departure, waiting for Longbottom and Lovegood to fade away from sight. For from in front of the entryway to the Headmaster's office, came quiet sobs that were becoming louder and louder; the concomitant chokes and gurgles were jarring, boorish, nothing unanticipated from a Weasley.

Draco cast a silent  _Muffliato_  on the unsuspecting, crying mess and tiptoed to the remaining bag on the floor. He threw onto it all the coins he was clutching in his hand.

Every single Galleon, including the one with the Protean Charm. Draco could feel its warmth slip away from his fingers.

She would need money to replace the buttons on her robe, anyway.

 

 

 

Lady Luck, as it turned out, had not ceased to bless the disciples of Godric Gryffindor; it had taken Weasley less than a day to locate the charmed Galleon and decipher its message. The night of Kreacher’s visit had therefore been the last of the detentions, for just after supper the following day, when the first winter snowflakes ended their aimless fluttering to settle on the wilted grass by the lake, Draco was called to the Headmaster’s office.

Professor Snape was gazing out the window into the early nightfall. A shining gold Galleon on the desk immediately caught Draco’s eye; the ruby-hilted sword lay askew on the burgundy carpet.

“You have succumbed to senseless heroics.” Irony pervaded every word of the former Potions professor. “What were you thinking, Mr Malfoy? Did the Sorting Hat err on not placing you in the house of baboons?”

Draco refused to articulate a response, just had he had refused to acknowledge to himself what his motivation had been.

He had always placed too much value on tears, even those belonging to a Weasley.

The echoes of  _Legilimens_  had not yet all faded into oblivion when dark eyes bored into Draco’s face, widening by the second before they shut close. Howls of laughter ensued. Draco had never seen the professor like this before — crooked, yellow teeth showing as the head tipped backwards, eyes trailed by long, deep lines furrowed prematurely for his age.

The sweet fragrance of elderflowers and alcohol staled to the smell of death —

“You’re drunk, Professor,” Draco said.

“… House of self-deceptive fools … the Hat was right, right after all.” Snape then gasped for air as the numerous buttons on the robe seemed to crush his breath. He recovered quickly, however, his dilated pupils —the only sign of his intoxication — camouflaged by black irises; the brutal indifference returned as well. “Your friends,” he enunciated with a smirk, “I sent them to the Forbidden Forest tonight; obviously, with the evidence of this theft, I can no longer entrust you with their discipline.” Gone was the last trace of amusement; Snape looked … accusatory, betrayed, even. “I confiscated this Galleon from them,” he continued, nodding at the desk as he stepped over the sword with little care. “Yours, I believe.” His voice then smoothened with a sigh. “Do not lose sight of it again.”

Draco nodded as he placed the coin in his pocket. “May I go now?” he asked; he did not wish to dwell on the incident any longer.

Snape merely seated himself in his chair; stroking his chin absentmindedly, he seemed to address the silver instruments in the opposite end of the office.

“The last enchantment conjured to the mirror was a Tactility Charm; what he sees but does not wish to own comes to him, while all that he seeks to possess remains trapped in the mirror, impervious to touch. Use it wisely.”

At a wave of Snape's wand, the double doors of the office had swung open; Draco left, perplexed by the cryptic advice. He wandered aimlessly through the castle, guided by the bluebell flames, until he found himself losing track of them just before the marble staircase descending into the Entrance Hall — that was the extent of the progress made during the detentions.

Before retreating into the dungeons, he felt his path to the front entryway; leaning against the flanking armour, he pushed open the door to a slit and looked outside.

The snowfall had become heavier; somehow, it brought peace to the night, its pure white drawing light from somewhere deep in the purple skies to weave a lambent cloak upon itself. A lone lamp was lit afar, in front of the line of the dark forest; he remembered that this was where Hagrid’s cabin was located.

In his mind, Longbottom, Lovegood and Weasley were having a merry time with the savage, sharing food and drinks that Draco would not dare to guess at their ingredients. Wrapping his robe closer to himself, he then retrieved the Galleon he had haphazardly stuffed in his pocket.

Despite himself, he could soon feel the corner of his lips lifted to a smile; for while the password to Snape’s office usually substituted the motto  _Magic is Might_  on the coin, the serial number beneath the Ministry’s emblem, where Dumbledore’s Army had used to relay their messages two years ago, had been charmed to the following words:

_BluFire Succendo._

He did not return to his bed; instead, he found himself in the Chamber of Secrets, practicing the trio’s gift on a small animal skull transformed to a clear jar. Once again, he lounged against the edge of the mirror, letting the bright feathers that hemmed his own reflection provide the needed illumination.

The spell was difficult to cast without knowing the needed wrist movement; for the entire night he waved, flicked and tapped his wand in every manner imaginable, and many times he had to stop and wipe away his sweat, heavy as his suspicion that the trio had deceived him. His twin watched on quietly, eyelids drooping lower every hour despite the backlight becoming more radiant — it was this strengthening brilliance that inspired Draco to forge on. The reward for his impending success was the ever tightening embrace of the stranger, whose profile was just short of discernible as the veil of feathers were gaining translucence through the night, whose caresses on Draco's twin’s bare flesh matched every one of Draco’s uncomfortable shifts in his sweat-drenched robe.

The merpeople’s song at sunrise welcomed the first bluebell flame he had ever conjured. When he had to leave the Chamber, he placed it, along with the jar, in the crystal casket from his mother, left in his book-bag from two nights ago.

He doubted he would ever have the heart to extinguish it.

 

 

 

This had to be the silliest contest ever to be held in wizardkind.

Bathed in the white radiance from the mirror, Draco smiled to himself as he waved his wand at one of the glass jars lined along the opposite edge of the mirror. A small sapphire flame flickered into existence, ribbons of blue stretching hesitantly like the hands of a newborn’s into the world to which they were born.

He peeked downward to check on the reflection. The glass jars were there, but there were no flames within the mirror; not that their light was necessary when the radiance from the mysterious man was strengthening by the day. Still, Draco considered this a significant victory; and since no one was there to catch his childish moves, he wrinkled his nose at his twin, who, in no time, returned the gesture.

Tilting his wand slightly and giving it a wave, another flame danced gracefully before him. He was definitely getting better. His first bluebell remained ablaze; Draco caught a sideward glimpse of the casket now placed in the open mouth of Salazar Slytherin, the light from within refracted by the crystal facets to a million shades of blue, chaperoned by bands of green and gold. Propped at the statue’s feet was his old school trunk, emptied in the Slytherin dormitory to free up space for transporting the flames to the lower floors; the serpents of the Malfoy crest coiled and flexed merrily on the handle, feeling at home with the many of their kind engraved along the stone pillars, instilling life upon the magical beasts that Draco loved if just for being his namesakes.

One last incantation, and a full arc of bluebells flickered before Draco; the project would be complete when these jars found their place in the deserted maze on Christmas Eve, which would descend upon the world in a few hours’ time. The trio had continued to do their part, lining the flames along the corridors of the ground floor, while Draco had taken on the task of bringing light to the dungeon.

Each so delicate, the collective luminescence from the flames painted the chamber walls a rich sapphire, and warmed the air with a touch of spring. He shook off his robe and cast it aside.

Perhaps his success with the bluebells had encouraged him, perhaps the spirit of the holidays that had driven his usual caution away, but his heart felt adventurous and eager to explore the depths of the mirror. He felt like the small child ready for his first summer dip in the pond just beyond the unplottable premises of the Manor; hovering above the mirror’s surface, arms supporting his weight as his hands below gripped the edges at the ends of the bluebell rainbow. A smirk came easily onto the face meeting his own with a challenge, the twin's body resting self-assuredly against the chest of the unidentifiable man below.

Draco flexed both thumbs and watched the pads slide onto the reflection surface; lifting his chin towards the line of small, fiery tongues flitting into the air, he closed his eyes and let his palms slip inwards toward its centre line, feeling the elaborate relief of vines on the golden edge before it caved downward. A trail of warmth rose and gloved his fingertips, then, a feathery softness so familiar to him – back in the days at the Manor, he would seek this comfort by running his hands through the plumage of a prized peafowl in the garden, and marvel at the iridescence of the transparent ocelli as they found the best angle to kiss the sun. He would then trim off the most beautiful feathers to make quills for his parents and himself.

Once, too, he had succumbed to the feathers’ seduction—

A blush flared to Draco’s cheeks and his eyes shot open; that thought belonged to neither here nor now. Appropriately, it was forgotten the moment he saw his forearms; for even as his nerves sang to every fluttering brush from the barbules, the flesh and bone of his forearms had dived into the other dimension; all that was left was an invisible rendez-vous bridging the blue fire and the white glow, and the two worlds from which they hailed. It was frightening, this vanishing act, and yet indescribably enchanting beneath the Mark, beautiful against the ever more sinister looking snake and skull with incurable trails of dry, jagged scabs crawling over it, the Dark magic making it impossible for wounds to properly heal.

He found himself wanting to immerse his arms further, wanting to know if the two worlds could fuse into one; if he would meet himself. And  _him_.

He took a breath, closed his eyelids again, and hoped.

Like rising neap tides, plumelets gently washed up his arms; he stretched and for a moment shifted his balance such that his knees bent slowly, bringing his shins away from the golden periphery and into the feathery sea; soft down tickled his bare stomach in no time, light as his twin’s hastened breaths, whispering in his ear.

It would soon be time for the final plunge, which would require a witness.

A blessing.

Thus Draco let his vision resume control of his senses; he looked deep into his own reflection, from the grey irises glinting with fear and excitement to the complexion pale even in its illusory health. True, Draco had frequently observed himself in mirrors, but his attention had long trained onto all that had shrouded his own skin – from his boots, his robes, to the numerous pins stabbed into the fabric for yet another unsatisfactory fit.

Now, basking in the light at a heartbeat’s distance across from himself, was himself again but without a care for all these things. The pair of enfolding arms, so protective of what they held, formed a shield for his twin; they seemed to become part of him, and perhaps would prove to be so when the excess plumage was shed. Would they spirit their charge away like with wings of an angel?

Whatever the light meant, whoever was its bearer, Draco decided that these arms — these shields — were what he had sought.

The perfect fit.

With that thought, he felt prepared; eyes closed, he bowed his head as if in prayers and sealed his lips against his mirrored own.

The world spun. Words defied the physical sensations Draco felt — it was as though he was surfing on the sand in a tipped hourglass, his world going topsy-turvy as he rode upon an ocean of dreams and reality.

The feathers undeniably settled against his flesh, as did the warmth, the embrace. The  _truth_  of their existence was so humbling that Draco found himself petrified; the impulse to struggle or scream, like he always did in the face of fear, evanesced. What had come to pass, inexplicable as it was, somehow assured him that it had no fangs that would gnaw on his nerves, no claws that would tear into his conscience; thus he relaxed and listened with full intent, searching for disturbances in the silence within the mirror, a silence that was one with the Chamber’s. Quiet sounds of breathing soon became audible — the first train was clearly his own, while the second came as one with the rushes of air against the back of his head, leaving him without doubt to whom they belonged.

A joy that knew no reason pervaded Draco. His face turned towards the warm breaths, and his one hand initiated its dive beneath the feathers. What he sought, however, was elusive. The barbs seemed to become adhesive as Draco’s fingers submerged themselves into them, gluing and lumping to a cocoon that prohibited all sense of touch.

That did little to dishearten Draco, nor did it dampen his will to face the man. Instead, what stopped him came as a flash, quick as lightning before his eyes, a sight so eerie that he stiffened instantaneously, and his torso uncoiled and collapsed upon his back.

It was a ghostly imprint of a skeleton, his skeleton — or was it his twin’s? — lying upon the feathers, the sternum of its ribcage cracked open along a line that traced his wound from  _Sectumsempra_.

Imprisoned within were two hearts, one strong and beating in clear rhythms, the other pale and convulsing feebly.

Was it real? Draco could not tell for certain, but he lacked the courage to confront it once more. He lay upon the light and the feathers, again innocent and luminous like the most fantastic of childhood dreams, and his mind retreated into inner thoughts.

He should escape this world, but his body lingered in its comfort. The arms holding him tighter by the minute were evidence, enticing persuasions for him to remain longer.  _It’s Christmas Eve_ , Draco told himself,  _a time for indulgence_. His vision strayed in his growing quiescence, out of the mirror to the jagged roof of the Chamber of Secrets; it was dark, unreachable by the bluebell flames that were out of Draco’s sight save for the one in the casket, its faint glow steadfast as the astral guides in the nightly sky. It reminded Draco of his parents, of their lives infiltrated by Death …

 _The last enemy that shall be destroyed,_  whispered words that alit like fresh snow in Draco’s mind, as if hinting on a revelation unbeknownst to him. They were unfamiliar; had they once been a promise issued by the Dark Lord? But the voice was melancholic, tender as the man behind him who seemed to share his thoughts and snuggled closer. Draco sighed, and soon he drifted off to slumber.

He woke with a start. A chill had seared into his scapula, and the relief beneath the plumage was grotesquely perturbed, the once gentle dips and curves pulled taut at an awkward angle as if bound by heavy ropes — a giant snake, even — intent to squash its prey into suffocation.

This realm was in peril; his bedmate, in danger.

In retrospect, Draco could have reacted differently; but at that moment, chaos reigned and he froze in place. Feathers fluttered wildly in a windless storm, while the light fluctuated between a dazzling overdrive and a dreary, flickering existence.

It did not last long. A loud  _crack_  ended it all.

The feathers settled.

Despair had won.

A soft glow remained, but no brighter than a few  _Lumos_ ; the man had lost his rigor — Draco could feel the man's stomach caving in, leaving a cushion of air behind the small of his own back – and his splayed arms were no longer capable of protection. The heavenly bliss was there no more, the comfort he still felt was easily matched by conjuring some bluebells in the  _real_  world for himself.

He should leave; there was nothing here for him to stay and as easily as this thought had come to him, he found his footing on the gold frame and stepped out of the mirror.

One by one, he collected the bluebells and secured them in his school trunk for the final night of his mission; there were brief moments when he caught sight of a sliver of his own reflection in the mirror again, but it owned nothing that he did not possess; at least, nothing he could see in the gloom.

This could be a relief, he thought, as he dressed and smoothened the wrinkles out of his heavy school robe, for he would no longer be tempted to return here every few days to watch himself, to wonder, to envy. Fastening the clasp on his neck with one hand, he stepped over the basilisk and stood before Salazar Slytherin, his other hand already extended to reach for the queen of the bluebells.

It was then he noticed how cold the Chamber had become; the mirror had always blossomed into a fountain of radiance upon his approach, and he had imagined the silver surface to be the portal to a world where light was constant as the sun, and warmth ubiquitous as air.

Now that light and warmth had diminished, would the weakened man behind the feathers survive? Who was this man anyway, he who was inseparable from Draco’s alternative existence, he who had come to Draco not as a minion but in a mirror with the power to reveal dreams, as it had done for Myrtle?

What did this all say about Draco, about his heart’s desires?

 _Nothing he can understand, thus nothing he can possibly want,_  he told himself again; but strength had left his grip, and his hand merely brushed the crystal casket before it fell to his side.

And Draco left the Chamber without turning back, his school trunk in tow; the serpents on the handle slithered onto the back of his fingers – to bid farewell, perhaps, to the bluebell flame burning behind him, as if blinking away tears at the inevitability of his departure.

 

 


	5. Part IV

They said that every calendar devised by men were based on solar or lunar cycles; if that were true, then time should come to a halt when the sun failed to rise and the moon ceased to sail the nightly skies.

The students had returned to Hogwarts from the holidays; classes resumed, so did the revolts, the detentions. Winter, in its ironclad steps, marched on, even though the sun had long been strangled to non-existence at every corner of the castle—there were no signs of joy, youth, or life. And …

Draco glanced towards the Ravenclaw table.

Luna Lovegood was nowhere to be found.

 

 

 

His efforts to dissuade himself from returning to the Chamber of Secrets had been in vain, futile as the lie he had told himself about the crystal casket—that the Malfoy heirloom had been left  _accidentally_  on Slytherin’s statue and must be retrieved at his earliest convenience.

Draco no longer required  _Lumos_  to navigate the tunnel; he knew every hollow in the stone walls, every patch of moss that had sprouted from the cracks – he had learned them just as he had memorised the stone reliefs in the Slytherin maze. Over time, the crunching noises accompanying his steps had diminished to echoes, the skulls on the floor collected for the bluebells and the long bones pulverized to silver dust beneath his feet. The folds of the shed snakeskin had become a milestone; once passed, the door to the Chamber was not far away.

This time, a beacon of sapphire flame guided his way into the Chamber. He approached the mirror, half hoping a dazzling pool of radiance would welcome him; but the white light remained weak and unsteady, its rays struggling to spread their wings. Whatever magic had strengthened them remained compromised.

“Hello there.” Draco attempted, for a moment, to play the role of a concerned visitor, a Ministry official offering condolences to the war victims at St Mungo’s. His back was straight, his hands folded neatly on the lap of his tailored robe; all that was missing were the bouquets of flowers and camera flashes.

There was a twitch in the feathers. Underneath them, as Draco discerned soon enough, a hand was raised feebly to hold the one belonging to his twin, who was rolling his eyes at Draco.

Right. Who was he trying to fool?

“Prat,” Draco mumbled. He retrieved his shrunken school trunk from his pocket, expanded it and undid the leather buckles; crumpled robes, miscellaneous toiletries and school supplies spilled all over the stone floor.

He refused to look at the mirror as his hands busily sorted his possessions. “I’ll be your neighbour,” he paused before adding hastily, his voice muffled by the loud clatter of combs and ink pots, “only for a little while, I hope.”

Silence. Not that Draco had expected anything else, but he was still thankful to escape judgment. He had had enough of that, enough of humiliation, too, to fill him with nausea even if he had only been a witness to it—this would have been a ludicrous sentiment to him still even a year ago, but then, so would have the notion of an ever expanding DADA classroom, the walls extending day after day to make room for Amycus Carrow’s ever growing collection. The once biweekly subject had become a daily, mandatory gathering of the entire school, in which the Death Eater flaunted his newfound taste in wizarding photography.

Instead of featuring century-old wizards and ancient tortures, the recent artwork featured the latest victims of the war and the freshest of their wounds.

Save for Carrow’s animated narration, at first nothing could be heard in these assemblies but the students' fast breathing and pounding heartbeats. This silence, however, never lasted. Soon, the first-year Slytherins blotted the still air with barely audible stutters that the victims might deserve their punishment; the second-years chimed in next, expressing a louder, more definite disgust against crimes supposedly committed by the torture victims, crimes that were rarely named or elaborated upon. Then, the older ones strengthened the chorus—and it took little time for the school to transform into a circus of name-calling, of false bravado.

Some, of course, were angry, indignant. Like Weasley, who would have hexed Carrow to pieces if not for Longbottom’s arm tightly around her shoulders; the latter was the usual picture of calm, his awareness of the frenzy only hinted by the occasional glances he threw towards Draco, who did not participate in the mudslinging for reasons of his own.

He was too intent on searching the faces, of the torturer and the tortured. Carrow had a penchant for outdoor executions, of lively, green backgrounds behind scarlet gushing from pallid skin. On one occasion, something in the corner of a photograph had caught Draco’s eye—lying prone on the yew hedge had been a wounded peacock, its long, unkempt train prominently visible on the snow-laden lawn, its vanes caked in dirt and blood.

His father had never let harm come to his prized fowls; but then, Draco had since noticed, many servants of the Dark Lord, who had never known mercy, had come to beg for it, tears and snot thrown in for effect before a wand had flicked their death sentence.

Draco found this humiliation difficult to swallow, almost more tasking than the pain he had to endure from his fickle heart; nothing, however, fazed him more than the fear of seeing his parents with every new photo that was unveiled.

The terror was prolonged this evening by Carrow’s decision to extend his showcase to the Slytherin dormitory, thanks to the overwhelming response to this morning's displays. The low ceiling and high-backed chairs converted the common room to a wardless prison, one without escape from the gigantic exhibits that Carrow had declared to “look too good to chop down”.

Draco sat by the elaborately carved mantelpiece, hoping that the crackling fire would tame his nausea. For a while, it almost worked; hypnotised by the flames of red and gold, his mind wandered to the Chamber of Secrets, then, to that conversation that had occurred in this same room so long ago, when his younger self had wished before Crabbe and Goyle for the Chamber to unleash its power and cleanse the world of the friends of Saint Potter, the Mudbloods—

The room promptly turned a dark shade of brown. Looking up, Draco saw a close up of flesh splitting open, the muddy shade a result of the blood’s red blending with the light from the emerald lamps suspended from the roof of the dungeon. The finale of this photo was a full body shot, capturing the agony of a Death Eater-turned-traitor inflicting the wound upon his own chest, apparently under the influence of an Imperius Curse.

The irony was impossible to ignore – his kind had resorted to self-mutilation without help from the Muggles at all. Draco lowered his eyes to look at the skulls adorning the cabinets.

 _Their owners must be turning in their graves,_  he thought.

A heart-wrenching wail then sounded, stunning all in the room and startling Draco’s heart to a wild flutter.

It was the call of a peahen. Carrow had just levitated yet another photograph, and an emaciated fowl could be seen in its corner, its feathers ruffled, its neck stretched for a raucous song of lament –

“Wouldn’t shut up, that bird, since its mate went down, and the camera catches peafowl cries ... I’ll slice its pretty throat one day.” Malevolence filled Carrow’s eyes as they swept towards Draco. “I can take care of its chicks.” Pansy began to chortle, but her laughs sounded forced and her eyes were dull with hurt. His preference for male companionship had been revealed to her then, either by Carrow or Crabbe; the latter took her cue and proceeded to howl.

Immediately, Draco’s line of vision was blocked by a wide figure, who must have moved in front of him by instinct. His voice, improportionately small to his body's size, started to whimper: “I … dun understand.”

Strangely enough, these three words turned into Draco’s saving grace; he had come to accept his expired welcome in Slytherin. “Don’t you worry, Goyle—” he gave a pat on his friend’s back, “—I must go to finish my Head Boy duties now.”

All eyes set upon Draco as he stood up and left, even the many sockets on the skulls, those he would have used to bear his bluebell flames.

At that moment, Draco decided to join himself the great show of irony.

If wizards could massacre wizards, then the Chamber of Secrets could certainly be a refuge, a safe haven.

He had run to pack, which had meant throwing the bare necessities into his school trunk and leaving the trophies and mementos he had brought from home on his dresser; he could not afford his departure to be conspicuous. He had even put on his best student robe and polished his prefect’s badge to a perfect shine; Draco Malfoy had never failed as an accomplished actor, had always kept his pride …

… along with a healthy dose of self-importance. No one had paid attention when he had slipped out of the common room except Goyle, whose wide eyes had never left him as he had walked briskly and quietly in the shadows behind the chairs.

Hopefully, Draco thought, shoving his now empty school trunk aside, there would come an opportunity to repay his friend.

“Maybe I’ll save him – heroically, Saint Potter’s way,” he said to the mirror; there was no denying that elation was seeping into his every cell, like water into a wilted seedling at the end of a drought. His twin smirked, and the mysterious man behind him shuffled weakly, sending a soft ripple across the plane of feathers.

Draco almost jumped to his feet. “You can hear me?” he inquired immediately, but got no response this time.

The rest of the night he spent transforming the Chamber into a temporary home; soon, he confessed to himself that all he actually yearned for was illumination. He had exhausted the animal skull supply for the bluebell flames on Christmas Eve, and for a brief moment he panicked about the lack of jars.

Pacing frantically around the mirror, he tripped over the basilisk.

Inspiration came to him at that fall. It was an idea suited for lunatics, really, but then, Draco was no stranger to taking on projects that were meant to fail.

And this one definitely promised brighter consequences.

Aiming his wand at the basilisk, he focused his mind on its weight and cast  _Wingardium Leviosa_. His magic was clearly inadequate; while the tail lifted, the skull, which concealed a significant fraction of the mirror, refused to raise so much as an infinitesimal tilt. Snape must have been determined to protect the mirror from theft—a venomous beast, devoid of life, was at once a visually horrifying, faithful and hefty guardian. A sense of rebellion fuelled the workings of Draco’s mind, and it spun and churned to his satisfaction by delivering a speedy proposal.

He should skin the basalisk’s corpse first, and then turn the skeleton around.

It soon became apparent that executing this plan would be anything but speedy. A spell of  _Diffindo_  failed miserably—its invisible blade was too blunt for anything beyond cloths and parchments, and the scales on the hide were tough as armour shields. Repeated attempts at different places yielded no better results, and after an hour Draco collapsed on the golden frame of the mirror, catching a breath as he gave the corpse a furtive kick.

“Seems like we’ll have to make do with a gloomy home,” he told his twin, whose equal resignation, signalled by slumped shoulders and a bowed head, instantly garnered a tighter embrace from his companion. “All right. I get it.” Draco rolled his eyes and looked away, annoyed for once at the stomach-turning saccharin, the hearts and flowers—

Hearts. How could he have forgotten that? He rose with a start, heedless of the vertigo that sent his vision into a spin, and pointed his wand at the stretch of hide before him.

“ _Sectumsempra!_ ”

It worked; a spectacle of gashes, spanning like a spider web, invaded every inch of the basilisk’s body. Fine incisions near the soft belly tore into jagged openings as the destruction relentlessly forced its way through the tough skin along the spine. Draco remained focused—for the harsh noises, while deafening, did not possess the fluid quality that he associated as the backdrop and aftermath of the spell. The blood of the beast had long dried and its heart turned to dust, and while the process seemed painful—ominous, even—there was something beautiful in watching the smooth, ivory backbone break through its tattered, toxic green shell.

In a shower of popping sounds, the hide disintegrated and scattered on the stone floor; with a wave of his wand, Draco easily banished the fragments to a corner of the chamber. He then spelled the Levitation charm onto the skeleton.

A swing, then a flip of his wrist, and the basilisk lay exactly the way he had envisioned it—just beyond the mirror and prone on its spine, the chain of bones perfectly structured to form a grate for his fireplace.

“ _Succendo!_ ” he drawled triumphantly, accompanied by a series of dramatic taps of his wand; one by one, the blue fires appeared on the vertebra, each held by an open arch formed by a pair of adjoining ribs. It was elegance juxtaposed with power, symbolised by the sharp fangs projecting menacingly from the basilisk's skull. A stunning piece, worthy a Malfoy's residence.

Most importantly, however, it was a vessel of light, of warmth; sweating profusely, Draco removed his clothes, and without much thought collapsed upon the bed waiting for him, soft and faintly lit in the now unobstructed mirror. As the feathers enfolded him lightly, he closed his eyes and waited for fire-breathing dragons to chase him in his sleep.

They didn’t come. It was a night without dreams.

 

 

 

If the passage of time was inevitable in the reign of Darkness, so, then, must the seasons be as well. Yet the nights remained long and the ground hard with frost; white winds shrilled their woes amongst the towers of the castle, the snows in their wake turbulent and befuddling as the rumours they swept into the ears of students—of battles won and lost. Of Potter found and lost.

The first sign of spring had come to Draco from the most unexpected source. The residual warmth was still tangible on his palm, where the charmed Galleon had rested peacefully. A fresh inscription had replaced the incantation for the Kindling Charm.

_9 30 AstroT DrsSeeker._

It had taken Draco a good five minutes to decipher the message: 9:30pm, Astronomy Tower, Dress as a Seeker. The sender must have been Weasley, but with the Quidditch prohibition in effect, she had to be aware that all the gear associated with the sport had been locked away, with each item monitored by a tracking spell.

Still, he had answered to the invitation, his Seeker robe stuffed in his bag as he followed the spiral staircase leading up the familiar tower. Waiting for him under the new moon was, indeed, the fiery Gryffindor, arms folded across her chest, her scrutiny intense as life in its full ferocity; her eyes made no effort to disguise any emotions, much like the eyes of another Gryffindor in the years past; except that while Potter had always been clear in his message, be it loathing or disgust, her look was chaotic and unreadable, wild with every passion known to men.

Draco decided to take the initiative.

“I’m here. What do you want?” he asked. The urge to return her glare was undeniable, thus he obliged, gave in to the instinct to cross his arms, as well—

“Copycat,” Weasley hissed before an uncertain look flashed upon her face, one that only Seekers were fast enough to catch. “One-on-one Quidditch, you and I. We’ll play catch.” A gleam peeked from her pocket as she spoke, and soon a Golden Snitch was hovering between the two of them.

“Traced?” Draco plucked the small sphere from her fingers, was surprised that she let him do so. The long wingspans, each composed of a silver feather, continued to flap leisurely, as if warming up for a sure-to-win competition; it was immaterial that one of the blades had apparently been damaged, its fine barbs bent along a small stretch of rachis near the tapered end.

Weasley shook her head. “It’s mine,” at these words, her fluttering hair seemed to suddenly become a nuisance; she played with it before continuing, “well,  _his_.”

Draco didn't need to inquire who  _he_  was.

Not that he would have the time to do so; with a twist at the wrist, much stronger than necessary, the red hair was piled into an untidy bun and Weasley reverted to her hounding glower. “Where’s your Seeker uniform?”

“Well …” Draco merely arched an eyebrow at her outfit—simple sweater and jeans; his silence made a better argument than any retort.

“I don’t have one.”

“You played Seeker before.”

“So?”

“I assume you played in proper uniform, didn’t you?” Hooch had disqualified many Quidditch champions on the grounds of inappropriate attire.

“I borrowed one and shrunk it.” Her voice was still strong and defiant, but the look in the eyes flitting from Draco to the Snitch was anything but. “You weren’t there?”

That game must have been spectacular, a victory that she had assumed everyone, her enemies included, had witnessed and could attest to its brilliance, and even more so, its reality. So that they could assure her that the events leading towards it, or perhaps, the sunlit days that had followed it, had been more than a dream.

Considering the circumstance, Draco felt quite honoured to be the one to wreck her wishful thinking. He simply waved the Snitch.

“Oh. Right.” Weasley fell silent. She was, for one moment, pensive, her fingertips skidding down the midline of Draco’s sweater as if to trace the old wound, the one that had led to her playing substitute Seeker for Gryffindor. She lowered her head and turned towards the horizon when she said, “He said he was—”

“Don’t.” The word shot out, expelled by the sudden surge of acid in Draco’s stomach. Slytherins never held much regard for repentance, and as dark clouds mired the glow of the moon with their claws, Draco wished to never hear an apology again, not even from their supposed Saviour.

 _Especially_  not from their supposed Saviour—if he felt remorse for self-defence, he could regret anything. Everything …

Draco yearned for the winds to rise, and they did. The sliver of the moon re-emerged, triumphant.

The soft radiance seemed to re-ignite Weasley’s spirit as well. “Why did you come?” She stared at Draco with renewed intent.

“Why did you ask me?” Draco drawled, with all the hauteur he could manage.

“You’re such a piece of work. I ask you a question and you just throw me back another.” The smirk on the freckled face was effortlessly sensual. “Well, I’m clearly looking for someone to play Quidditch with. Someone who’s good, who doesn’t mind playing dirty and is not about to let me win. As much as I love Neville, he fails to fit the bill at every single count.”

“I’ll take this as a compliment.” After feigning to ponder, Draco responded.

Weasley actually chuckled; pushing herself up with her arms she settled herself in one of the crenels. “Be my guest. Plus, it’s much harder to get caught if the Head Boy was my partner in crime, and—” eying Draco’s bulging book bag, her face lit, as if an idea had suddenly struck her, “—if I’m wearing his Seeker robe.” Her legs kicked idly at the old stone parapet.

Almost too idly for someone who had just made such an impulsive, if blatant request. Still, Draco applauded her thespian skills and admitted to himself that her sheer nerve would have won him over, had it not been betrayed by a pleading glint in her eyes.

He took his revenge by taking his time, pacing back and forth on the battlement, enduring the sting of chilly air in his lungs before retrieving his Seeker robe.

Lips worried between teeth, Weasley’s face was pulled to a deep frown; evidently, the fact that her family owned nothing had not deterred her from getting everything she ever wanted.

Finally, Draco spoke. “You’ve planned this all along, haven’t you?”

Her denial was fast as instinct, expressed in an unblushing shake of the head; but her vision never strayed from the uniform, her eyes lustrous as the ultra-light Demiguise hair woven into the fabric. Draco sighed, charmed the robe red and gold and threw it into her lap.

“Burn it afterwards,” he said.

She flashed him a cheeky grin and vanished into the Tower; soon, she stood before him as a Gryffindor Seeker, two beaten-up broomsticks in her hand.

“Authentic antique brooms, Filch model one, each twig honed with dust, absolute zero acceleration in the past decade.” She bellowed a la Ludo Bagman in the wireless endorsements of the Cleansweeps, and shoved one broom into Draco’s hand.

Draco had readied himself for this moment. He spelled a Cushioning charm and mounted the broom in lightning speed, released the Snitch and immediately set off into the air with a hard kick. Weasley was left scrambling to catch up on the battlement.

“Cheater!” she shouted, but remained unfazed; it did not take her long to hover in the sky next to Draco, both of them needing time to adjust to their flying tool. The Snitch had long vanished out of sight, its speed evidently untouched by the fault in its wing. Meanwhile, the brooms were a challenge to manoeuvre, at once slow, tremulant and prone to veer steeply from their intended paths.

Draco was heading towards the Quidditch pitch when Weasley swerved and sped off in the opposite direction. He hesitated briefly, then turned to pursue her instead; it had always been his tactic to trace the flight path of his rival Seeker.

He had forgotten that Weasley was a Chaser in a Seeker robe.

The lake spread beneath them, lambent under the moon. The quiet water from late summer had long been awakened by orderly fronts of ripples, driven by the weakened but still heavy winds of early March. Silver glitters sprinkled along the ridge of the marching waves, most of them meek as fairy lights; occasionally, however, one would shine with mesmerizing brilliance, as if a shooting star had fallen into the lake and was waiting for someone to find it a home.

And without fail, Weasley would dive.

At first, her antics shocked Draco, who watched the scarlet silhouette perform suicide missions for what could not possibly be a Snitch—for, like the Snidgets they had been modelled after, Snitches were never known to seek refuge in the water. He watched her plunge, headlong, on a rickety broomstick, until the fingertips of her outstretched hand wetted and vanished into what could only be a memory of moonlight. She only levelled her broom at the very last minute, her face bridled with disappointment as she commenced the ascent back to surveillance height.

Numerous plunges later, Draco realised that she was born to seize upon the most eye-catching, to capture the most brilliant; once they had wandered into her visual field, she was driven to claim them as her own—what they were, or where they came from, made little difference. This night, the strategy struck gold—for it was indeed her, and her Chaser instinct, that first located the Golden Snitch. With a brutal pull on the handle, she launched herself upward and into a cloud, where Draco caught sight of the tiny dot and its broad, slender wings.

He hurtled in pursue, only to lose track of the Snitch in the blink of an eye. Weasley, however, seemed to experience no such setback; her speed accelerated, her flight a reckless climb bearing to the sharp right, and soon she crossed the shoreline of the lake into the skies above the Forbidden Forest. The Snitch re-materialised in the distance.

Draco continued to trail the Seeker in red, as he had always done in the past; but as the landscape below him darkened to a snare of barren branches, stealing the moonlight and giving back little in return, the Snitch’s disappearing act became strikingly apparent, its frequency accelerating to a steady blink in the distance. His disquiet was not helped by the slow broom that made catching up difficult, the Snitch still travelling in full speed along an alarmingly simple trajectory into the heart of the forest.

Then came the most perplexing moment, when the spot of gold froze in mid-air and flickered, seemingly uncertain of where to go; it was brief, but sufficient for Weasley and Draco to catch up.

It then became clear why the Snitch’s spasmodic presence bothered Draco alone.

A thestral floated in the air, its dark skin easily camouflaged by the night. Quicksilver eyes, empty and unforgiving, surveyed the terrain, and beneath one of the bat-like wings was the Golden Snitch. It fluttered wildly, trapped in the space between the wither and the wing, at times visible and then hidden again under the wing’s steady beating.

Closing in towards the creature in full speed, clearly unaware of its presence, was Weasley, her hair flying loose in the winds, her body trembling as the broom’s endurance was tested to its limits. Her robe flapped wildly as the gust from the thestral’s wings countered her approach, yet she chose to ignore it, or perhaps, her innate need to chase had muted her common sense.

The wing would soon crash upon her if she insisted on the hunt.

When Draco did the unthinkable, all he could see was the sheen of Gryffindor red imprinted on his retina. “Thestral!” he shouted at the top of his voice, and unsure of the thestral’s sense of hearing, he retrieved his wand, cast  _Lumos_ , and let the broom, which carried his weight, succumb to gravity.

It was a free fall. Cold wind shrieked in his ears and burned every inch of his exposed skin. Time seemed to move through molasses as he held the broom in a death grip and struggled to look upward, to see whether the gamble had paid off.

_Please, look at me._

Years must have gone by before the thestral answered his prayer. White eyes glowed towards him as the beast charged downward, its body clearing Weasley’s path—

Except, Draco had grossly underestimated the locomotive force of flight; as the thestral’s appendages repositioned and the wings stretched and unfurled to their maximum span, it was as if a full-fledged Bludger blow had hit Weasley.

She fell from her broom. Still working to regain equilibrium, Draco let out a yelp and willed his broom to abide by his command once more, he then pulled himself upward to reach her as rapidly as he could; meanwhile, the thestral adjusted its course of descent and galloped towards the same destination, its wings losing their steady rhythm for the first time –

They all met at one point in the air.

Weasley was pale as parchment, but conscious and eerily calm. Draco dragged her onto his broom, only to hear the crisp crackle of wood fibres breaking as the handle yielded to their combined weight. She blanched even more, but said nothing.

“Thestrals … do you remember them from class?” he shouted into the winds; the thestral hovered next to them, an impassive living sculpture in the air. She merely nodded, still befuddled with shock. There was no way she could mount on an invisible, airborne creature with Draco’s verbal instructions alone, and this broom would not support them both for much longer.

He would have to go with her, if the thestral would permit him.

And once he did, there would be no more denying of the past; for he would ride on the ultimate testimony of his guilt, that night on the Astronomy Tower when he had handed Death its scythe. His hands shook, black thorns were sprouting and creeping from the hollow re-opened in his chest into his every blood vessel, like the many barren limbs of the Forbidden Forest below—

Weasley tugged at his robe; the thestral was in motion again, circling their broom with its neck stretched out, the chain of its vertebrae tasselled by an impossibly fine mane tautened and swayed, as if moving to a song that no ears of men could hear.

Then, Draco saw them below—specks of silver and gold that seemed to have heeded the call from the heavens, congregating from all directions towards what had to be a clearing in the forest. They navigated through the dense woodlands as though sailing upon invisible streams, waters that left indelible imprints of time and its unpredictability within the oppressive stillness of the forest. The specks merged into a pool of light, a full moon in the heart of abomination and fear.

Draco noticed that the silver species, slightly larger and more numerous, hovered protectively around the golden ones.

_Unicorns._

He wanted to find the glowing eyes once more, to look into them and see what the thestral could see. But he was too late; the winged horse had moved below them while he was distracted, and in one heart-stopping jolt Draco felt himself lifted onto its back, along with Weasley and the broom, and was soaring high into the clouds. He clung onto the creature as tightly as he could, his face buried in the mane, and swore to himself that the beads of water running off the soft hairs were from the chill that stung his eyes.

When the winds calmed to naught, when hard earth met the soles of his boots and cascades of empty seats in the Quidditch pitch greeted his vision, Draco’s tears had dried. Weasley dismounted and carefully treaded around the thestral, her knees still wobbly from the staggering flight. Draco joined her and both collapsed on the frosted grass, face to face with the beast that remained absolutely still, its wings erect like sails on a mast.

“Is it still here?” Weasley asked.

Draco nodded; the thestral affirmed its presence by getting on its feet and nuzzling against her unkempt red hair. A smile emerged on the still pale lips as she held up her hand, felt around and petted on its cheek. “I rode one of your breed before. Was that you?” she whispered.

When the face of the thestral eventually turned to Draco, it kept its distance and stayed close to Weasley; its bright eyes bore into the very depth of Draco's own, before it lowered its muzzle into his lap and a small sphere settled inside his cupped hands. The tingling flutter of a captured Snitch felt unreal to Draco’s fingers, as the thestral spread its wings and took to the nightly skies again.

“You won,” Weasley’s voice sounded lightly beside him.

Draco opened his palm and examined the Snitch; the feathers were ruffled and soaked, but it appeared to have suffered no further damages than the ones it had formerly sustained. He Scourgified it and offered it to Weasley. “I’ll remember the victory,” he said.

Weasley looked at the Snitch for a moment. “I want you to keep it.”

“It’s his.”

She smoothed the bent barbs with her fingertips. “I have this feeling that it’s meant to be yours.” She paused and sighed. “I found it in the stuff he left in the Burrow. He didn’t give it to me.”

Draco frowned as his thumb rubbed against a minute inscription on the golden exterior. “This was a school Snitch, and somehow he got to keep it.” He arched a curious eyebrow. “Fringe benefit from being the Chosen One and all?”

Rather than responding, Weasley focused on pulling the blades of frozen glass. “Hooch didn’t want it back,” she mumbled. “It’s … broken.”

“It flew pretty well today. What did he do, hex it in practice?” Draco could not help but smirk; it would be amusing to learn that Gryffindors had not been above charming Quidditch equipment to their advantage.

“Oh.” Bottom lip worried between teeth, Weasley was already amused; she announced while shooting him a sideward glance: “He crushed a wing with his fist when he beat you to a pulp with my brothers. That was after a game two years ago, I think?”

Draco fell silent.

“You asked.” She sounded apologetic.

“And now you want me to have this? So he can break my nose again?”

Her shoulders slumped as she whispered. “If he comes back.”

Draco found his grip on the Snitch tightened; the metal felt as warm as his own skin. “What if he doesn’t?”

She pulled up her knees and rested her chin upon them; her eyes were trained to the goal posts on the opposite end of the pitch. “All my life, I’ve wanted to be one of three things.” She raised a finger and pointed an imaginary wand to each of the three hoops. “A sports reporter, a professional Quidditch player, a writer.”

“Not Mrs—”

Weasley cut him off. “I’m a Chaser—” she took a deep breath, “—and I know this much about what it means. I need something like these goal posts … or the Quaffles—something real, something I can set my eyes on all the time. If Ha …” she forwent the name, “… whatever I want isn’t there, eventually I’ll tell myself to stop caring and move on.”

“You’ll lose him—”

“I’ll find someone.” It was a promise, and she shrugged as if to ward off the pain that had to come with it. “Don’t get me wrong.” She turned to Draco and explained, quietly and sincerely, “I love him, I still do and wish that he’ll be forever a part of my life, but … I’m feeling rather antsy right now.” The sadness in her eyes was only momentarily; the next second, the thrill of inspiration took over. “Maybe I can be his biographer.”

Draco snickered. “The Weasels will finally make a decent living.”

“I’ll be ten times wealthier than you—” she cast him a haughty look, “—and I’ll tell the world what a nasty little ferret you are.”

“I’ll be insulted if you don’t make me a proper villain.”

“The quill’s in my hand.” Her freckled face lit up with mischief; the horrors of the near fatal accident seemed forgotten, long dispersed in the early morning breeze. “I’ll make myself a fairy tale princess. Maybe—” she eyed Draco with a lopsided grin, “—I’ll make you bald.”

“Half of the warlock population will be offended. You said you’re penning a biography, not fantasy or slander.”

“Skeeter said the same thing,” Weasley argued with a chuckle, before falling on her back to look into the skies, her fiery curls spilling life onto the lawn. “What about you? What do you want?”

She then realised, perhaps, that these questions were far from appropriate to ask a Death Eater, even one who had shown mercy and risked his life for her own. She shot up, embarrassment clear as the new moon. Draco held the Snitch between his fingers, watched the silver reflection brighten the feathers.

“I don’t know,” he said. A confession.

She knew better than to press on. “You’re a Seeker. You’ll find it.” She stood and stretched, letting the light from the heavens shower upon her like the cold rain of early spring. “There’s nothing wrong with playing Chaser once in a while, too.”

Draco kept quiet about his gratitude as he continued to observe the Snitch. He decided he wanted it. “You’re certain you have no problems parting with this?”

Weasley turned to him and nodded. A moment later, she began to talk—swiftly and quietly, her words riddled with guilt, “I should have told you that its anti-capturing charm isn’t working properly. It still flies at top speed, but doesn’t know how to wriggle its way out of traps and narrow corners anymore, and gets caught in things it ordinarily stays clear of …”

“Like water?” Draco inquired, thinking of the Seeker-cum-Chaser, whose chamaeleon robe had glowed in the night as she had fallen for the radiant allure of the lake.

“Like water.”

 

 

 

Once upon the time, the Ides of March had marked the start of a new year, the first day in a season of hope and promise after months of desolation.

It had also been dedicated to the God of War.

Perhaps it explained why Draco, still holding his Snitch in one hand, had collapsed in his now permanent home in the Chamber of Secrets. His head was resting on a small wireless, which had exhausted him for the past hour in his futile attempt to locate  _Potterwatch_  in the airwaves. Myrtle, who he had asked about the programme, had just informed him of the password; she had learned of it from her selkie lover, a journalist for the merfolk who used to communicate daily with Dumbledore. Lately, the water dwellers had received a significant influx of news on the war; the thawing of lakes and rivers had eased the access to hearsay from the land, while mobilising many refugees and fugitives who had opted to travel along bodies of water.

Combing gently the small stretch of crooked barbs on the Snitch, Draco wondered what he had hoped to hear. If Potter had been caught, and the captors had been none other than his parents … was that what he wanted?

There was an answer, and it spoke to him like the soft bubbling from the waters above—sounds that he had, over the past winter, taught himself to appreciate. They had been unsettling at first, their source unknown and their message mystifying, but then, Draco had provided them an imaginary home—glistening waves upon which sunlight broke through the lake’s surface, their ebb and flow conveying, beyond the indecipherable tidings, an invisible light and warmth into the Chamber.

In turn, the Chamber opened itself to the world; the present unearthed and reshaped knowledge attained from the past. On the floor was a parchment filled with spells and charms, those with the magic to bestow internal compasses and mobility to evade capture. Compiled for his endeavour to repair the Vanishing Cabinet, Draco had, since the Quidditch match with Weasley, let the memory of them, once vehemently interred, trickle back into him. Shifting to support his weight on the elbow, he scanned the list for the last spell he had tested before the search for  _Potterwatch_ ; lethargy had defeated his usual poise and good manners, thus he remained sprawled on the floor when he held up his Snitch and tapped his wand against it.

A loud pop ensued, synchronous with a violet spark, and both the wand and the Snitch flew out of his hands and high into the air.

It was not at all unexpected; many times he had barely escaped a charging cabinet in the Room of Hidden Things; he rubbed his face and waited for a peal of clatters to clamour in the Chamber.

It did not come. Silence prevailed, the whispers from the lake usurped by Draco’s anticipation.

Then, a blast of white light detonated—dazzling as lightning, it penetrated every crack in the ceiling and walls, illuminating what Draco had never seen before—scales and skins slithering past one another, elongated bodies weaving mazes upon mazes of living serpents beneath the stones.

He jumped to his feet and sprinted to the mirror; the light was so powerful that little of what lay over or within could be discerned. The Snitch fluttered just above the reflective surface, bustling as the tip of its once injured wing folded to nurse the now perfectly smooth vane. Draco's twin traced its flight with his eyes, his expression as astonished as Draco’s at the sudden transformation of his dwelling place.

But it was the hawthorn wand that ultimately captured Draco’s attention. Even in the depths of the mirror, its dark wood was conspicuous against the feathers, cushioned and caressed by their touch—

Their touch, which appeared to be the replica of a human’s grip on the handle; Draco could almost see the undulated relief of fingers beneath the barbs, of knuckles protruding from the back of a hand.

One thought clashed against Draco, and it brought his mind to a standstill. He shed his robe on the gold frame and dove in.

Sceneries raced by, at once a feast and an assault to his senses. The white light thickened to a void; it swallowed him whole before feathers emerged and brushed against his skin, easing his body into the metaphysical flip that then fused him with his mirror image; the union failed to break his momentum, however, and he resumed his descent, face down, towards the veil of feathers and the man beneath it, the man who had regained his light with Draco’s wand …

Inevitably, the horror that had once seeped into the corner Draco’s vision re-materialised; only this time, he had no means of turning back. His fall was relentless even as the rays around him diffused into shimmers, as though their sprint was impeded, and along with it, the passage of time. Rapidly closing in Draco was the skeleton with two hearts, which lay on the feathers, terrifying with its frail bones that seemed perforated by light, its ribcage distorted by the fissure running through the sternum.

Just when Draco was about to collide with the skull, the hands shrouded by the feathers were abruptly lifted, the hawthorn wand still in one of them. With one clean motion, they yanked the ribcage apart.

Draco screamed.

He screamed when the grey femurs shattered into dust, screamed when cracks ran from the eye sockets and the skull caved into a heap of bone plates, he screamed when the ribs snapped, one by one, and the shards sprayed and stabbed into the pale, barely beating heart –

He wanted to scream until his lungs collapsed, until someone saved him from the horrors of this world, but he no longer had the ability. He had become insubstantial, weightless as air, and the flutter of all the feathers beneath him had changed into gales that threatened his very existence.

He could feel himself drifting, dispersing. He closed his eyes.

Then, he felt a hand met his own—gloved in feathers, its fingers intertwined with Draco’s, tethering him like a kite in the open field; embedded between their palms was the hawthorn wand.

The touch of his own magic consoled him, still, Draco dared not open his eyes, not until another hand wrapped around his waist and held onto him, easing his final descent. In between their two bodies was the one remaining heart—shining, red, restless in its yearning for a new home; its contractions resonated with power and anticipation.

And somehow, Draco was already aware of what would come to pass. Indeed, even before his skin could sense its rhythm, the heart gave a leap and dissolved into his chest; there it settled into residence, its every beat re-affirming Draco’s existence.

A warm embrace welcomed him into this new life, wrapping him with sufficient plumage to take flight.

And fly, Draco did.

Rather than releasing the intertwined fingers, he locked them resolutely, the wand pressed so firmly into his palm that the wood relief would forever be imprinted upon his lifeline.

“Thank you for being a friend,” he whispered.

Perhaps, it was the thrill of his rebirth, perhaps, it was the joy of seeing that the radiance came from the man and from him alone. Draco scanned the profile of the hidden face and pressed his lips with where the other set had to be.

He half expected to retreat with a mouthful of down. Instead, he almost felt a hint of flesh—moist, supple and keen on returning the favour; thus he pressed on, trusting his mouth to explore the contours of its counterpart—the volume and curvature, the delicate peak where the upper lip met the philtrum, the dipping arc at the corners.

It felt real, more than anything he had felt in the past year. His vision adjusted to the light, just as it had long ago at the seaside, when his sand manor had looked splendid against the summer ocean; meanwhile, the heat was reminiscent of the mugs of hot cocoa on Christmas Eves, which he had insisted on cupping with his small hands that had been armed with the best mittens. As these thoughts, these parallels from his past, rose like tidal waves, the feathers all around him soared as well, light and free even in the air heavy with moisture, from shallow breaths and cascading beads of sweat. The blanket of peacock feathers was thinning, fraying, and the skin and flesh, the muscles and sinews of the lean body below were becoming appreciable. Racing heartbeats that matched Draco’s own were palpable as he ran one hand across the man's chest.

A swollen nub ghosted his thumb; he stroked it, and the body beneath arched in response, breaking contact of their lips for the moment. With a gasp, Draco re-captured the mouth, and his hand fumbled once more for the sensitive spot and resumed its assault. Driving, no, hurtling him forward was a fear, an urgency, as time slipped away through their still intertwined fingers.

The man was writhing with such force that what had remained of the veil crumbled with each twist of his torso; feathers flew all over, raging like a storm as they scattered in frenzy, their regal white insipid and deathly in disarray. The sheer multitude of vanes and their shafts were sufficient to blindfold Draco, to screen his vision from the cornerstone of this world—the man in his arms, whose damp, taut skin was finally tangible, whose erection brushed against Draco’s own.

It  _was_  real.  _He_  was real. The feathers twirled even faster, and they did to the man what they had earlier attempted to do to Draco—he could feel a weight dragging against the man's body, a dense fluid threatening to pull it away from below …

Draco had neither been a keeper nor a saviour, nor had he succumbed to the indignity of fighting for what he wished to possess; in this moment, however, he heeded the call to be the guardian, the redeemer—for the light that eclipsed his pride, for its bearer who outshone his every past desire. Thus he squeezed the hand intertwined with his own, wrapped his other arm so tightly against the other body that he swore it would hurt. His intentions must have been clear, for a strong jaw rested against the crook of his neck and heels dug into the small of his back; thighs spread open for him, strong muscles that held on to him, relied on him to be the anchor in this storm.

What came next was as calm and smooth as the horizon, as natural as the meeting of the earth and the skies.

Kissing the man deeply, Draco fused with the light and made it his own.

Desperation rushed against the air once more when their bodies began to rock against one another. At first, the motion was gentle, soft as the whispers of  _I could want this_  rustling in Draco’s mind, but then the fluttering feathers seemed to fuel it, strengthen it to become a contest of power. Draco’s thrusts hastened to the challenge, the whispers crescendoing into chants that spoke louder and faster to him by the minute.

_I want this._

The feather storm surged, a giant tide like the fluid roll of his hips as he slammed deeper and harder into his light. It was suffocating; the winds from the unknown were heavy, so dense that they seemed prone to sinking and condensing …

And rising below him was the same colourless, odourless liquid that had wanted to tear his man away before.

Draco could no longer keep up his steady rhythm. He was close.  _They_  were close. The radiance from his arms had become impossibly bright, so glaring that his eyes could no longer look into it; he buried his face into the shoulder heaving against his own brutal invasion, his hand clawing senselessly up from the man's jaw, his temple and into a wild head of hair—

 _Want …_.

Perhaps Draco shouted the word; he would never know for certain, for at that moment, a sharp chill at the man's forehead slashed the tip of his fingers, the heavy water froze beneath him and expanded, lifting him up and away from the light, the warmth—

The stone floor of the Chamber and a small, dusty wireless invaded his sight. He was lying on the solid surface of the mirror, the hawthorn wand clutched in the death grip of his right hand. The feathers had re-settled in the dim reflection, but every vane looked abused, every shaft bent or broken; his twin was staring at him, shocked and miserable, his free hand soothing an erection that was wilting rapidly.

Exhaustion overcame Draco; his attempt to crawl off on the mirror ended prematurely when he collapsed against the frame. His fingers brushing against the gold, he read for the first time the inscription that used to be hidden beneath the basilisk; the message came to him as easily as if it was written in proper orientation.

_I show not your face but your heart’s desire._

He used his last morsel of energy for a smile—a sad one, no doubt. A powerful ache still lingered within him.

Powerful, like the beating of his new heart.

The Snitch approached him from a corner, trying to lure the Seeker to give a proper challenge to its healed wings.

Its flutters were hypnotic, and Draco fell asleep.

 

 


	6. Part V

On the day of the Spring Equinox, Draco decided he would return to Wiltshire for Easter break.  
  
He missed his parents terribly, even missed the lesser residents at the Manor: the roses, which would be in full bloom by April; the peafowls, whose new eggs should be hatched by the time the holidays approached. Plus, the light from his Bluebell basilisk, while an acceptable substitute of a winter’s day, was no match for the vivacious glow of spring. He would risk the wrath of the Dark Lord and his servants for a date with the sun.  
  
Arranging for the last-minute transportation with the Hogwarts Express was no trouble; many students had not returned after Christmas, voluntarily or not, and the blood status check was deemed unnecessary for those who had managed to return. As a seventh-year, it was a mere courtesy for Draco to relay to Professor Snape of his plan to leave the school.  
  
He should not have done so.  
  
If he had not, he would not be sitting now by the edge of the Mirror of Erised, a vial of Veritaserum in his trembling fist.  
  
_Destroy the mirror before you leave,_  the former Potions Master had said. He had appeared windswept, his oily hair tousled and his skin pallid—as if Winter, banished from the greening moors and mountains, had broken in and taken him hostage.  
  
“Professor, I—” Draco began, unsure of whether to deny his knowledge of the mirror or to veto its destruction. The shiver racing down his spine further hampered his judgment, and his lips froze the words to a standstill.  
  
The clinks of glass against glass and the fragrance of elderflowers once again inundated the room; the sweet scent became almost tangibly strong when a tumbler materialised before Draco. He reached for it, only to be shocked by the icy stabs on his fingertips; he would have dropped it if not for the fixed look from Professor Snape.  
  
The small, black pupils challenged Draco to consume the drink; and so he did, raising the tumbler to his lips to take a sip.  
  
He almost spit it out. The liquor’s bitterness was so intense that it seemed caught at Draco’s throat, barring the entry of air into his lungs; he swallowed with much difficulty, which was rewarded by a pleasant warmth seeping into his every vein.  
  
The headmaster’s gaze did not falter, yet even without its coercion Draco found himself desiring more, despite the taste; thus he closed his eyes and guzzled all of the tumbler’s content.  
  
For one moment, Draco lost himself, his strength and focus spent on reconciling the sensations of agony and bliss; the soothing effects of the alcohol barely compensated the overwhelming urge to bite off his tongue. When he slowly re-oriented himself in the Headmaster’s office, Snape was looking out of the window, the thin, cracked lips curling to what could only be a smile—  
  
That, and the ghost of an intrusive tug that he felt in his clearing mind, finally made Draco drop the glass onto the carpet. It landed with a soft thud, a cue for Snape’s smile to snap back to a sneer.  
  
Draco was not surprised, neither at the headmaster’s deceit nor the spilled dregs dying the burgundy plush a deep emerald. “Those thoughts are private,” he protested.  
  
“And who knows how long they will remain so, should the mirror stay,” Snape responded after turning to pace the other end of the office, the heavy folds of his robe his only feature remaining clear in Draco’s vision.  
  
The voice lacked something distinctive—the usual snide diction, the cutting tone; somehow, Draco found it more difficult to dismiss. His mind had already conjured the image of a cracked mirror, of feathers caving into a gaping mouth as the mutely screaming man battled behind the veil, desperate to defend against the black gashes assaulting his world.  
  
He shook his head; the alcohol made it heavier than usual. “I can’t do it.”  
  
“I’ll show you how.”  
  
“I ... ” Draco found himself twisting the fabric of his cuffs, his sluggish mind churning concomitantly to devise a scheme, an excuse, “... doubt I’ll have sufficient magic to carry it out.” He regretted to have spoken instantly; even in his own ears, the words sounded false and pathetic, close to begging for a derisive reprimand from the headmaster.  
  
But none came.  
  
Instead, there was a sparse chorus of jingles, and Draco turned to see Snape intent on realigning a toppled silver instrument on a spindle-legged table. At Draco’s scrutiny, he dropped it immediately and straightened to march, with strides even more controlled than usual, back to the mahogany desk.  
  
“Mr Malfoy,” he then addressed Draco caustically, “nothing is infallible. And you, of all people, should appreciate that the more ostentatious the display, the more prone to obliteration it is.”  
  
Draco settled in a chair so his weakened knees would not give. “Then why don’t you do it?” he asked, only to notice the slur in his drawl from his thickened tongue, “why didn’t you do it?”  
  
“Because I wanted you to see.” Snape swept towards Draco and leaned close to him, the smell of morning dew drifting in his wake; his answer was equally swift, quiet, yet brutal. “And now,” his long white fingers pulled open the buttons on his chest, and from the web of dark laces they yanked out a moleskin pouch, “you’ll annihilate the evidence that may be your death sentence with this.”  
  
The pouch felt warm to Draco’s hands, much warmer than he had thought Snape could ever had felt. He untied the knot with some trouble, his fingers insubordinate with excitement and intoxication. Two vials then slipped from his hand and fell beside the tumbler.  
  
Even from the distance, the content of the glass containers was simple to identify; a small maroon cube bobbed sluggishly in a heavy suspension, looking timeworn and fragile. As Draco bent to pick up the vials in the silence of the office, he realised that the antidote of Amortentia made a soft sound with its every movement, a tinkling reminiscent of wind chimes. He regarded the headmaster in search for an explanation.  
  
“Veritaserum will dissolve the Mirror of Erised.” The scorn had all but dissipated from Snape, as if the sight of what looked little different from a rusted piece of metal could banish the most vicious of fury and calm the most tempestuous of seas. The dark pupils never left the maroon cubes as the former Potions Master continued serenely, “One batch should be sufficient. As for the other one ... ” he distanced himself from Draco again, straightening the already well-positioned glass case that had once belonged to the sword, “... consider it a token for your service as Head Boy. How you’ll use it—to extract truth or to repel love—will be your choice.”  
  
“No.” Draco stood up with a start, oblivious to what Snape had just said beyond the mirror; the words from Slughorn’s lesson managed to filter through the clouded state in his mind. “Isn’t it true that Veritaserum derives its insight from Amortentia, which in turn shares its magical attribute with the Mirror of Erised? If they are to interact, their powers should be synergistic, should they not? How can they end up mutilating one another?”  
  
The teacher in Snape returned; he turned to listen to Draco intently, evidenced by arms folded across the chest and his distinctive words of encouragement. “Amuse me further with your insight,” he said, “tell me how you have conveniently neglected that the Truth serum is in fact made from the  _antidote_  of the love potion.”  
  
Draco, for reasons unbeknown to him, developed an urge to emerge victorious in this debate. “Antidotes need not be the same as antagonists,” he ventured.  
  
“But they both render a potion impotent.” Snape suggested quietly. He moved to the desk, picked up the dried tumbler on his way before settling in his chair. The glass was placed before Draco, who pressed on and incorporated it into his demonstration.  
  
“Take this glass, Professor,” he said, “and assume it to be the stomach, maybe, or the liver. Meanwhile, the potion may be the wine you offered me. If I had filled it with some  _ordinary_  elderflower wine, then you had nowhere to place your brew. No one would have been able to tell the difference from sight and smell alone; I would have potentially found myself an antidote that shut out your potion, but did nothing to antagonise its properties. In fact, the antidote must have share many similarities with the potion itself.”  
  
A curl of Snape’s lips, and Draco knew that his answer had been satisfactory. “So,” the headmaster poured himself a glass of the wine, “how would you call this class of antidotes?”  
  
Draco pondered for a moment. “Competitors,” he drawled, his eyes catching the rays of the sun charging through the window only to be deflected by the glass case. Without further thought, his caution addled by alcohol and his logic blinded by recent triumph, he blurted out, “Gryffindors.”  
  
Snape’s expression darkened. “Elaborate,” he commanded, taking a sip of his drink.  
  
“Inside this castle, they were thieves of our glory, our snags.” Determined not to cower, Draco sought to justify himself as succinctly as possible. “But students from Durmstrang, for example, are unlikely to differentiate between them and us, aren’t they?”  
  
A corner of Snape’s mouth lifted. “Someone had a change of heart.”  
  
Draco knew better than to rebut, opting instead to observe the rise and fall of the headmaster’s chest, just visible beneath the loosened robe. The sight of it was strangely comforting.  
  
“Professor,” he resumed after Snape poured his third glass of wine, “you haven’t answered my question.”  
  
“Oh?”  
  
“Why should Veritaserum damage the mirror?”  
  
“Mr Malfoy, I’ve never mentioned any harm.” The sharp focus of Snape’s eyes began to diffuse; a faint tinge coloured his skin to a shade more human. The softened lines on his face showed no signs of him imbibing anything less than pleasant.  
  
Draco frowned. Since when and how far had the professor spiralled towards being a drunkard? “Sure you did,” he countered, “the wine’s playing tricks—”  
  
Swivelling his glass to study the amber fluid, the professor smirked and cut Draco off. “Doubtful, despite my very wishes,” he said. “And the word I used, Mr Malfoy, was 'dissolve'.  _You_  are handed the task of damaging the mirror.”  
  
“I fail to see a difference other than in semantics.”  
  
“Your tolerable insight into antidotes was evidently a stroke of luck,” Snape finished yet another glass of wine, “as I should have expected. I shall relegate you to remedial first year Potions for failing to apply the most basic principle of Potions—”  
  
It was sufficient clue.  _"Like dissolves like_ ," Draco called out.  
  
The sole affirmation was given in the form of instructions from the headmaster. “What you will collect is a small quantity of fluid, the product of the silver cast melting into the serum. The frame needs to be destroyed as well, but a simple magical fire will suffice. My concern, which should be yours as well, is that being nonpareil, one cannot predict whether the mirror will be reconstructable from the melt. I would suggest you to discard it in multiple batches. Otherwise, dispose of it in an open body of water.”  
  
Memories of a storm of broken feathers returned, ghosts of fervent kisses and entwined limbs that caressed as much as they haunted Draco’s senses. Winds whistled in his ears before condensing into water, rising against the golden frame that morphed into the mountains—then, the lake materialised before his eyes, its surface rippling in the spring’s breeze as it waited for him to leave his heart’s desire to drown.  
  
He grabbed the bottle on the desk and guzzled the wine that remained.  
  
“Someone once said to me,” Snape said, ever so softly, his glass set on the desk, his eyes focusing past Draco on the menagerie of silver instruments, “that one’s dreams as shown in the Mirror of Erised were neither knowledge nor truth, that to dwell on them was to forget to live.”  
  
At these words, Draco merely looked up. The wine had mollified him.  
  
“That someone was an old fool. Those dreams  _were_  knowledge—the truth about the man who stood to be judged. He who truly lives has chosen to dwell on them, to acknowledge the yearnings of the soul that, unlike vices that intoxicate the mind and senses with gratuitous pleasure, are clear, if sombre, reflections of his identity, of his place in this world. These thoughts necessarily bring confusion. Pain.” The alcohol had loosened his tongue, and another sip of it hoarsened his voice to a whisper. “And if it’s too late, regret.”  
  
For a brief moment, Draco wanted to inquire what Snape had seen in the mirror, how his mind had found peace with the demands of his soul. Could a man and his heart seal a pact? To ask would have been an invasion of privacy, however, thus he hesitated. His courtesy was unjustly rewarded by yet another tug on his mind.  
  
“Stop butting in,” he grumbled.  
  
There was no mistake this time. Snape’s lips crooked into an odd but genuine smile; he then picked up the empty bottle on the desk.  
  
“There’s no difference in ingredients between this drink and what you called  _ordinary_  elderflower wine.” The headmaster seemed to address himself as his hands caressed the empty surface, where usually a label should have been placed. “The elderberries had not yet ripened when ripped from their branches during harvest. That’s all.”  
  
“Aren’t they poisonous?” Draco permitted his thoughts to stray.  
  
“Indeed. The fact that both of us are alive should convince you that I’m well aware of the issue.” Snape’s diction hardened again, and with a wave of his wand the bottle was banished to the fireplace, where tongues of flames leapt to lap up the last drop of alcohol. “Your curiosity should be satisfied, however, and I expect two scrolls of parchment from you on the detoxification methods of elderberries, to be completed during your stay at the Manor.”  
  
Rather than protesting, which would have been futile anyway, Draco wished to demand why the Headmaster bothered with the young but deadly elderberries. Why didn’t he abhor them, dispose of them like other cultivators? Why did he dedicate his time and effort to cleanse them of their poisons, when their benign, mature form was so ubiquitous that even the Weasleys could afford it?  
  
But then, Snape had looked him at the eye.  
  
“We shall discuss your findings upon your return.” He had commanded, before tipping his tumbler for the final sip; only then had he continued, his face still hidden behind the glass, “Immediately and in person.”  
  
Draco had no longer needed to make his inquiries. He had understood.  
  
Having understood, however, did not make the current task easier.  
  
“It’s time,” Myrtle’s voice rang lightly in the Chamber, “or you’ll miss the train. Did you say goodbye to him already?”  
  
Draco nodded, his eyes remained fixated on the mirror, on the  _he_  who appeared to be quiescent behind his twin, on the tattered veil of feathers that had turned yellow and on the verge of demise. The stare returned at him was accusatory, the chill in the expression ill-suited to the profuse sweat beneath his travelling cloak.  
  
At the corner of his eye, he could see a dash of silver looping gracefully along the lighted basilisk; the ghost soon hovered beside him, glowing more brilliantly than she had ever before.  
  
“Why don’t we try this?” Myrtle looked immaculate, almost pretty; her robe was perfectly fitted, her long hair pulled to a neat French braid. “I’ll spread myself on the mirror—maybe it won’t see you any more. Then you’ll do whatever you need to do.”  
  
Draco sat down on the floor. “I must pour a whole vial of Veritaserum all over it.” He wrapped his knees with his arms and looked up to his friend. “Even for ghosts that’ll be a bit much to get showered with, I suppose?”  
  
Myrtle lowered herself to the gold frame, a shadow of mist fanning on the mirror as she approached. “I don’t think it matters, Draco. I’m not real, don’t you see? There’s no truth hidden in me.”  
  
“You’ve lied to me before,” Draco argued, chuckling sadly as he thought about the time she had introduced him to the mirror, “and what if—”  
  
“No what if’s.”  
  
“But—”  
  
“You’ve always believed in me.” She attempted a pout, a playful sideward glance; but the air was too heavy with the weight of impending doom and she gave in with a sigh. “Draco, really, so what if something happens? What do I have to lose?”  
  
“Your boyfriend. And your life at Hogwarts—” Draco caught himself; Myrtle’s time in the castle, though memorable, was hardly worth nostalgia.  
  
The ghost giggled as she watched him bite his lip. “That’s the thought. Nigel understands … that I’m bound to leave when it was him who showed me … the one thing that’s made dying nothing to be scared of,” her smile revealed to Draco what it had been, bittersweet for its belatedness, its irony, “that to move on is the best fate for us ghosts.”  
  
She paused before the final declaration, her voice suddenly sharpening and her pitch higher at every syllable. “It can be the best fate for you, too. Follow your heart—” The last word ended as a shriek, but Draco had no time to contemplate its meaning, for her form shot towards the ceiling and was then diving downward in a ferocious spiral, a silver tornado that wrapped around him, blinding his sight as it froze his every muscle. He could feel the sting of strong winds that swept the potion out of his hands, could hear the loud crack as Myrtle retracted her long, ghostly robe, throwing the vial against the mirror and smashing it into a million pieces; he could smell the impossibly rich scent of Veritaserum, of Manor roses mixed with the aroma of freshly baked pastries …  
  
Then his senses revolted. Numbness permeated his skin, his ears detected nothing but a soft hiss mingled with the fading buzz of the explosion; his nose was assaulted by a pungent odour that reminded him of war and infirmaries as his vision was inundated, with merciless clarity, by an overpowering shade of blue. The white light from the mirror was extinguished, as was the silver ribbon that had been—  
  
“Myrtle!“ Draco cried.  
  
Perhaps the mirror had once been an invisible space within the Chamber; perhaps the void it left behind explained the intensity of his voice and the resonance of its echoes, drawn out and indelible as the name it was calling used to be.  
  
_Myrtle ... Myrtle … Myrtle …_  
  
She was gone.  
  
It was difficult for Draco to carry out his task; the waves of his wand were too stiff to siphon the pearl-white melt of the mirror back into the vial without a spill, his trembling hand barely managed to levitate the frame over the arching ribs of the basilisk. He saw, in a trance, how the procession of Bluebell flames flared up and slowly swallowed the gateway to the undecipherable world that had been his sanctuary; the vine relief on the gold withered in the heat as it retreated, higher and higher up the frame until it unravelled from the inscription at the pinnacle, the trellis from which it had sprouted and grown.  
  
Draco could not watch any longer. He busied himself with checking the locks of his school trunk, found comfort in the familiar sensation of serpents slithering onto him, their cold, lean bodies encircling his wrist. The crystal casket, retrieved from the mouth of Salazar Slytherin, felt warm as always; the Bluebell flame was burning steadily inside. Awestruck and angered in equal measures by its resilience, Draco stood motionless before it, unable to bring himself to extinguish the fire.  
  
What bestowed him with the strength was a rumble, as the last fragment of the mirror’s frame toppled onto the spine of the basilisk.  
  
It shook Draco, roused him.  
  
It was time to depart. To seek the promises of spring—the resolute and inevitable return of light, no matter how dark the winter; new lives as tender as rose petals under his fingertips, no matter how deeply frozen the ground, hopes and dreams as bountiful as the plumage of peacocks, no matter how barren the landscape.  
  
It was time to go home.  
  
_"Finite Incantatem,_ " he whispered, and the Bluebell flames flickered into embers. He pocketed the casket, the vial of molten Erised placed within it.  
  
And in the last sapphire shimmer from the basilisk, Draco stepped out of the Chamber of Secrets.

 

 

 

He had never seen the lake at daybreak.

The small boat glided through the veil of ivy, which opened into the vast plane of gold-streaked cerulean. The air was still cold from the night, but the winds, tamed by the promise of a new day, had forged the surface of the lake into yet another mirror.  
  
Draco’s reflection, lost when he had traversed the same body of water last autumn, was found again; his gaunt face had filled, his pale skin a perfect canvas for the vibrant rising sun.  
  
He dipped his hand into the water's mirror, watched his fingers break through the glow. There was no Golden Snitch, and definitely no lover waiting for him beneath a blanket of feathers.  
  
There was only a promise to be kept.  
  
The casket was placed in his lap, the crystal facets shimmering to the flaming skies. He opened it and uncapped the vial.  
  
Drop by drop, the iridescent fluid dove into the lake. The boat sailed on, marching  _Forward_ , the only navigation command that Draco knew.  
  
Myrtle would have approved. He watched the blossoms of silver ringlets, beneath which liquid pearls dispersed and spiralled into the depths. He wondered if Nigel found traces of his love in the waters, if he tried to cling onto them like memories in a Pensieve. Was the selkie in mourning? Or was it truly possible to rejoice in the shadows of Death, to see it as an enemy destroyed?  
  
The vial emptied as the shoreline approached; weighing it in his hand, Draco thought it would make a wonderful gift for the Headmaster; he could present it along with his essay on elderberries, a memento of what the mirror had shown him, had shown them both.  
  
And perhaps, one day, the truth would indeed merge with their hearts' desires.

 

 


	7. Epilogue

**~ Malfoy Manor, April 1998 ~**

 

The wand-maker bellowed a thunderous snore in his sleep.

  
A sense of defeat suddenly welled up within Draco. “I must go back upstairs. Father will realise I’m missing,” he said, his tone as low as his mood. Lovegood nodded with a sad smile; she drained the water from the casket and handed it to him, and he returned its previous inhabitant—a vial of Amortentia’s antidote from the Headmaster—back into the hollow. She then offered him the last rose petal, which he clutched tightly in his palm.  
  
As the door of the cellar materialised at the tap of his wand, she called his name once more. “Draco.”  
  
He turned; he could not ignore her since she had handed him his first Bluebell flame.  
  
“I want to paint a mural for the fairy tale when I go home. May I use your face?“  
  
Draco felt uncertain, but there was little time to think; thus he merely looked at her as the heavy iron fell, separating the fates of the two friends once more.

 

 

  

It had been customary for Draco and Lucius to have a glass of wine together in the drawing room shortly after dinner, the only private time shared between father and son in their unremitting servitude to the Dark Lord.  
  
The chandelier’s light stung in his eyes after the visit to the cellar. Draco had managed not to squint as he quietly sipped his elderflower wine; it tasted like water, its character had long succumbed to the overpowering taste of Firewhisky, which his father was downing in loutish gulps.  
  
They did not exchange a single word.  
  
Draco observed his father, or rather, the shell of what his father once had been. His skin was creased and sallow, the long, silver hair unkempt and his spine held in an unnatural bent. He reminded Draco of the albino peacock dying on the hedges, and the yellow, tattered remains of feathers—  
  
A sudden commotion exploded within the Manor. There was shuffling and screeching, of heavy objects hauled roughly along the hallways; there were voices—of bellowing men, of his mother, whose diction, though light, was always resonant. His father jumped onto his feet, banished all traces of alcohol before falling back onto the chair, his bloodshot eyes fervent with hyperawareness.  
  
All faculties of perception left Draco, however, once he saw the spoils from the Snatchers shunted into the room. He staggered towards the mirror above the fireplace, heedless that the casket in his pocket crashed against the armrest, then against the vial of antidote that had rolled out of it, shattering the glass and releasing the potion. It sizzled in the air and burned as it drizzled down his skin.  
  
But he could not feel it, for his sense of touch had all been siphoned back to that one night in the Chamber of Secrets, to the storm of feathers raining upon him, to the pressing need of flesh again flesh, cumulating to that searing cold on his lover's forehead that had banished his touch—  
  
He stared into the reflection before him. The captive’s face beside his own was inflamed beyond recognition, red with pain and swelling save for a white imprint on the forehead—it could have been searing hot, just as the black Dark Mark could blaze like a scorching fire. But at this moment, drained of all colour, the skin pulled so taut that it seemed frozen and would crack like a glacier, the lightning scar looked cold as death.  
  
The face glowed, but only because the chandelier glared mercilessly upon it, the crystalline drops slicing radiant shard upon radiant shard into the flush skin, on dark bruises along the shaded jawline that the caked, even darker head of raven hair was threatening to engulf.  
  
There was no warmth, no light, no comfort. The veil of peacock feathers had long retreated, or perhaps, shredded into half-beings lingering just beyond Draco’s vision, scrambling frantically for a lifeline as they demanded him to look, to identify the stranger who stood resolutely out of his reach.  
  
The scrolled frame of the mirror encircled their two faces; its intricate bands of gold coiled and twisted, ensnaring their fates and entangling them within this one time, one place; poor imitations they were of the vines endowed with life, woven into words that proceeded to sing in Draco’s ears, starting softly as a lullaby—  
  
_I show not your face …_  
  
The song strengthened to a chorus, an opus of hopes and fears that lifted him sky-high only to crash upon him.  
  
_… but your heart’s desire._  
  
Amidst the din, a voice from faraway slithered into his senses; it sieved through the darting echoes between his ears, the muddled thoughts of a Seeker—or was it a Chaser?—desperate to escape the mind's prison that Draco knew not how to destroy.  
  
“Is it? Is it Harry Potter?”  
  
He could answer, thereby acknowledge what the mirror had shown to him—  
  
“I can’t.”  
  
_Men are such liars._  Myrtle drifted into his memory, tutting with a giggle; through her silver, translucent frame, the Headmaster, windswept and his buttons undone, was gazing into the mountains beyond Hogwarts.  _I wanted you to see_ , he said, each solemn word infused with the scent of elderflowers,  _the truth about the man who stood to be judged._  
  
It was clear in the reflection.  
  
Once again, Draco looked into the mirror—the one in the present, the one from the past.  
  
Clear it was, indeed, what his soul had yearned for.  
  
Clear it was, what he could own, who he could be, if he offered himself a chance.  
  
“I can’t be sure,” he uttered, but his words, reluctant as they sounded, were unconvincing even to himself.  
  
A battle-cry pounded in his chest, forging his strength as it steeled his resolve.  
  
There was no denying of what this fight would be about; bright as the Golden Snitch, elusive because Draco had set it free. He had sought it and would chase after it; the prison crumpled beneath his feet, and his new world, his new life spread before him like water into the heavens.  
  
Eyes shut close, the warlock sealed a pact with his heart.

  
_~ Fin_

 

 


End file.
